


into flame

by kurgaya



Category: One Piece
Genre: Agender Character, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Crew as Family, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Phoenixes, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 23:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15130010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurgaya/pseuds/kurgaya
Summary: "Zoro lied, didn't he?” Luffy asks.“About having a Devil Fruit?” Zoro hazards. “I ain't got one of those.”“You've got something, but you don't wanna tell me what,” Luffy says, surer this time. Their voice is as light as the campfire, but it burns with the heat of the blaze. Zoro would never wish an immortal life upon anybody, but the fire in Luffy makes it hard not to dream.[A canon-era phoenix!au from Shimotsuki Village to Water 7. Zoro catches fire. Luffy catches feels. They're both kinda smart but still pretty stupid about it].





	into flame

**Author's Note:**

> Whoa, it's been a _while_ hasn't it?
> 
>  **Notes:**  
>  \- If you know how the Avatar cycle works in ATLA, then phoenixes are like that  
> \- The first two scenes involve child death (Zoro's past life in the first scene, and Kuina in the second).  
> \- The ambiguous ending isn't really that ambiguous, but tagging for safety.

 

**i** **. rebirth**

Zahra is nine when she Burns.

She doesn’t mean to. Only, the winter is war and the back-alleys and streets are the snow-bombed battlegrounds, and though it has been many-a-day since Zahra had the will to uncurl her body of frostbite and bones, she can still see the rats and the dogs and the children alike as they scrabble around. Scavengers, the world has made of them all, cast away into long-forgotten backstreets of town. Where the people fear to tread, the alley-children like Zahra fight to call their home. Zahra doesn’t know how long she has been living in the same dress, on the same streets, with the same hunger gnawing at her fat-less skeleton and her feather-less limbs and bone. The same sun-less sky clouds over her. But she knows it is colder now than it ever has been before - _she_ is cold enough now to breathe ice and cry sleet and dream of sunlight, fire, and gold.

A life of nine years is hardly worth remembering. _Zahra_ will become a landscape of ice and the eyes of a city betting on when she will die, for it is her next life of which legends will be told, a life she starved and froze and forgot how to fly for.

She cannot die. Young Death snatches her briefly, but even They shield away when she engulfs the back-alley in flames. A sickly child of nine blazes from dirt, to charcoal, to gold. Fire obliterates ice and ashes torrefy snow. The city witnesses a rebirth, and the shadows claw away from the glow.

That night, the moon dares not rise as the world bows down to the sun.

The phoenix crumbles to ashes - and the phoenix rises in flame.

 

 

 

**ii. flying**

Zoro is twelve when he kills his sister.

He doesn’t mean to. Only, she’s a twisted heap at the bottom of the stairs from a fall from mortality that Zoro can never understand, and as he stares at her broken arms and the bloody path she bounced, he thinks of his flames that flicker and heal. Surely, with powers that blaze with such a protective light within him, he should be able to do something for the young girl that he has come to love - come to cherish and strive to _be_ from the moment her father opened the doors to their home. Surely, Zoro thinks, with the resolution of Kuina when she blisters her hands on her swords, as he kneels down beside her and knocks Wadō Ichimonji’s silvery sheath away, surely there is _something_ he can do.

Zoro clamps his tongue between his teeth and lays his hands atop Kuina’s shoulders, pressing fingertips into the wonky angle of her neck. She isn’t breathing. Zoro cannot feel a fire within her, so this is what he prays for, scrunching his cheeks and squinting his eyes, wrinkling his nose in a concentration that will lift the sun, one day, and yearn for the laugh of the King.

He is young (old, but young this time) and he knows little of the lives he lived before. There was a girl, once, of this he is certain, who lived to less than he and set a city alight when her wings were smothered in snow. There may have been a man before her, someone who sailed the seas just as he sailed the skies above, but Zoro has never paid much attention to what had been, preferring to focus on the possibilities, the future, the _what may be_.

He wishes now, more than ever, that he had learnt from his centuries in this world.

Zoro calls for fire - and fire is what he gets.

(Kuina doesn’t Burn like phoenixes do).

 

 

 

Zoro is seventeen when he bids his father and the dojo behind.

He will not return as he is, but as he will be, a life beyond this one that he cannot yet fathom. Koshiro will never see his son again, but he will see the phoenix once more in his lifetime, so like Zoro’s rough and yet so very kind disposition, and so like the fire that burns in his eyes. _Zoro_ will be remembered throughout history as the man at the side of the King, but not even Zoro is to know that yet as he lifts Wadō Ichimonji high in farewell, and loops the village twice before finally finding his way.

“Kuina would be proud of you,” Koshiro tells him the first time.

“Signposts exist for a reason, Zoro,” is what Koshiro tells him the second.

Two years pass in solitude, frequented by pirates and thugs whose bounties Zoro hunts. They come and go just as briefly as the days, brought down by Kuina’s faithful blade. Zoro sleeps, trains, and wanders, for the most part content with his own company and the safety it brings. Strangers are unpredictable and Zoro trusts no-one but himself, although a short few months with two fellow bounty hunters do test his wariness towards intimacy. Johnny and Yosaku are two neon-coloured teddy bears super-glued to Zoro’s side, and despite Zoro’s irritation and initial protests at their happy-go-lucky attitudes, that glues hardens to cement, and two new brothers he appears to gain.

They’re idiots. They’re his friends.

He doesn’t let them touch him in fear of watching them burn.

Since Kuina, since that night, since Zoro almost engulfed their home in flames and killed both Koshiro and himself too, he has shied away from fire. He knows it cannot hurt him, that it will only bring life when for others it brings death. He doesn’t want to harm those around him, like Kuina, like their father when he rushed inside at the smoke and the flame. It is best if he keeps what he is closely guarded, lighting campfires the traditional way and refusing to uncurl his wings to the sun.

In this life, he doesn’t know how to fly. Zoro intends to keep it that way. He tries not to think of the cold little girl as he does. He’ll fight and defeat Mihawk using nothing but his swordsmanship and his will to keep Kuina’s dream alive; her dream is his dream now, for it is the least he can do when he lives and dies in the ashes and watches the mortal men wither and drown.

If there are other phoenixes about this world, then Zoro cannot recall them. There may have been a time, once, when he knew their faces, knew their fire and the breadth of their wings through the air. He may have had somebody to share in this immortal life so many lifetimes before. Older, phoenixes grow, but Zoro doesn’t know how old he can be, but whether there are others like him or not, whether there _were_ or whether this world’s solitary sun is the only other astral to burn like he, it doesn’t matter. Zoro has no interest in locating his own kind. To be _the World’s Greatest Swordsman_ is Kuina’s dream, and Zoro has a golden-eyed man to hunt down.

Rumours say that Mihawk has been seen in East Blue, so it is East Blue that Zoro searches as his nineteenth year passes by. This sea is a calm, serenity of a sea, where the wind blows untroubled and the waves wash the shores in foam. It doesn’t seem a place that the reigning World’s Greatest Swordsman would linger, but Zoro isn’t going to question a stroke of luck. The Grand Line and the New World are treacherous seas over which even he has rarely flown, his past lives preferring to roost up high in the idyllic and safety of the four Blues’ skies.

(That isn’t to say that he hasn’t braved the storms and hurricanes before).

His search for Mihawk leads him to the lonely, fear-stricken Shells Town. The inn on the high street is unusually empty for one tended by such a pretty young woman. In his travels, Zoro has found that that men hound the bars for the women and the drink, although more often than not they succeed in the second and ward off the first. Perhaps the bartender’s squealing daughter keeps the working men away, but whatever the reason, Zoro counts himself fortunate not to have to deal with the riff-raff, and plonks himself down for a drink at the bar. Drinking himself into a stupor is impossible with his fire, but he appreciates the taste and the brief chill down his throat. (Whiskey he avoids for its snap and its burn, but Zoro won’t say _no_ to a beer).

The bartender is wary but receptive to his show of coin. Rightfully so, considering the reputation that Zoro has earned in these parts. She isn’t to know that he won’t hurt her, and she _certainly_ isn’t to know that he won’t even near her. He slides a few coins across the bartop and listens to her huff, and then waits for her to set the glass down before reaching to accept his drink.

It’s easy to maintain his fierce reputation as a bounty hunter when everybody thinks he’s a dick.

The bartender is quick to change her tune once Zoro saves her daughter from being mauled by a dog. He doesn’t hesitate in killing the animal, collar-less and vicious as it is, not if it means protecting a little girl from ending up as a chew-toy, but that doesn’t mean he enjoys silencing it forever. All he can offer is a swift death and a curse at whatever law-enforcers are skipping out on their duty - a group of people who turn out to be the crux of the problem in this case, as a gang of marines barge into the inn to inflict revenge upon whoever had the _gall_ to kill the _precious, perfect little poodle_ belonging to the captain’s son.

Zoro sneers at the suggestion that the dog was anything but ill-trained. The marine with the chicken-butt hairdo and the reedy voice demands that the bartender and her daughter be punished for their crime (which is a whole load of bollocks in Zoro’s opinion), and then calls on his officers to execute the two civilians where they stand.

Zoro steps between them, lip rising up in a snarl. Sunlight beats in through the windows.

“Anybody who aids these criminals is liable to the death penalty,” Chicken-butt warns with a flourish of a heavily-jewelled hand. A scarlet sheen of sweat lines his forehead and his eyes dart to Zoro’s katana, but Zoro doesn’t draw any of his blades in the face of such a coward.

Instead, he grumbles, “What sort of shit-show is this?” and gets shot once, twice - three, four times for his audacity. He heals almost instantly, flames melting together tissue, bone, and skin. There’s nothing he can do for the blood that splatters the inn or the bartender’s screams as she shields her child, but Zoro can definitely do something about the marines’ looks of flabbergast as they quiver behind their weapons.

These men are unworthy of dying upon his blades, so Zoro doesn’t kill them. This doesn’t stop him from hauling their pathetic arses out onto the street, his hands burning blackened welts through their uniforms and blistering onto their skin.

“You’ll regret this!” Chicken-butt screeches, his men fleeing down the street.

Zoro rolls his eyes, fingers tapping Wadō Ichimonji’s hilt for good measure. “I don’t regret anything,” he vows - a lie that Chicken-butt believes.

The bartender is still clutching her daughter when Zoro returns inside. His blood stains the floor and his threadbare shirt, painting him as a dead man walking more than anyone could ever know, and he doesn’t blame the mother for her fear. He’s piss-poor at dealing with emotions though, so it takes some effort not to grind his teeth together and hightail it out of the bar.

“I could… clean the floor for you?” he offers, thinking this reasonable considering it’s his blood that decorates the entrance of the inn.

The bartender is quick to dispute him. “No! No, it’s fine,” she insists, surprising even herself with the vehemence. Her daughter makes a soft noise from where she is hidden against her mother’s chest, and Zoro’s stomach twists.

He said he doesn’t regret anything, but maybe he regrets this a little bit.

“All right,” he begins slowly, trying not to provoke her. “They might be back though - I don’t want -”

“There’s a room upstairs,” the bartender interrupts, startling them both. “You can - stay, have a shower. I - please. I should be thanking you.”

She doesn’t sound particularly grateful, but Zoro will take what he can get. He supposes it isn’t every day she witnesses a man defy death by burning his skin back together. She has every right to be frightened of him, and Zoro cannot be angry at her for that.

“Oh,” he replies, confused as to why she is now offering him a place to stay. Kicking him out is definitely the logical action, although what he said about the marines returning is true. He would like to stick around to ensure the family’s safety, and it certainly would be easier from within her own home. “So d’you want me to -”

“Please,” she insists, this time sounding impatient. “You’re making a mess and my daughter doesn’t need to see this.”

Zoro doesn’t remember what it was like to have a mother, but as his tongue ties itself into knots and he flees upstairs at the tone of her voice, he thinks this must be pretty close.

 

 

 

He lingers in Shells Town for a few days, ever-vigilant in his guard of the inn. Chicken-butt never makes a reappearance, but some of his lackeys do, snooping around the street like a pair of dopey scent hounds. Zoro’s presence deters them from approaching the bar, but they slink away muttering and plotting to themselves, so he doubts it will be long before they return. Perhaps beating them into the ground for a second time will persuade them to admit defeat. Zoro cannot remain the family’s sentry; even now his fires burn for someplace beyond this tiny isle, and though he does not want to condemn Rika and her mother to death, he doesn’t know if he will be able to resist the burn forever. He will have to think up a more permanent solution, but he is loathe to inflict his wrath upon even a man as cowardly as Chicken-butt.

Luckily for Zoro, the answer wanders into the bar just a day later, in the form of a boy with the sun in his eyes and a hat for a crown, and the will of the phoenix that refuses to die.

Zoro doesn’t know if any of his kind endure this changing world, but as he listens to Monkey D. Luffy laugh with a song in his voice, he thinks that this boy who blows raspberries at Morgan’s reign is the closest thing to kindred that he will ever find.

“I’m looking for this _Zoro_ dude,” Luffy proclaims, charming the bartender with his easy smiles and childish ways. “He passed through here recently, yeah? What sort of bounty hunter has a bounty on their head, huh? It’s great! He’s gonna join my crew!”

Zoro wasn’t aware that he had acquired a bounty, but given Chicken-butt’s weaselly influence, this doesn’t surprise him. What does surprise him is the boy’s declaration that Zoro will be willing to sail with him - sail with anyone, let alone somebody he knows nothing about - and maybe Rika’s mother has the same reservations, for she neither discourages or encourages Luffy, continuing to pour drinks with a thoughtful hum.

On the stool beside Luffy, the boy with pink hair and rosy cheeks to match doesn’t appear to have the same neutrality. “Luffy,” he whines with the tone of someone well-used to sighing this particular name. “A bounty hunter is bad enough. A bounty hunter _with a bounty_ is bad news! He must have done something really bad!”

“He’s a pirate!” is Luffy’s illogical conclusion.

Zoro is most certainly _not_ , so he steps away from the stairwell that he’s eavesdropping from and plonks himself down at the bar, making a point to emphasise the _click-clack_ of the katana at his hip so that the two kids can’t mistake them for toys.

“Whoa - hey!” Luffy cries, eyes dazzling at how his words seemingly materialised Zoro from thin air. “You’re him!”

“Oh - oh dear,” moans his pink-haired companion, scooting to the edge of his stool as any sane man would. Luffy’s self-preservation fails to meet these sensible standards, and the straw-hatted kid just laughs as his friend frets beside him, as though a bounty hunter with three swords is anything to laugh at.

“Join my crew!” Luffy declares, throwing his arms wide.

Zoro almost - _almost_ \- flinches away, neither wanting to be touched by or hurt the kid with the goofy smile, no matter how outrageous his demands may be.

“No.”

“Ahh, that’s not a good enough answer,” Luffy sing-songs, arms still spread wide in invitation. His friend’s head _thunks_ against the bar, and the bartender, wisely, edges away to leave Zoro to deal with this calamity.

“Tough luck, I ain’t joining you. I’m not a pirate, and I’m definitely not sailing with one.”

“But you have a bounty,” Luffy argues, picking his nose.

“That doesn’t make me a pirate.”

“Yes it does.”

“No it - _no_. I’m not joining you; that’s all I came to say.”

“Is it?” Luffy retorts, a gleam in his eyes. He sticks an elbow to the bar, planting a grinning cheek into his hand, and though his legs swing like a toddler from the stool, there is an unexpected sense of intuition about him, a wisdom beyond the carefree persona he presents. “‘Cause you could’ve just avoided us till we gave up tryin’a find you.”

“ _We_?” squeaks his friend.

Zoro raises a sceptical eyebrow. “You sayin’ you would’ve given up?”

“Nope,” Luffy replies, popping the ‘p’. (And no, Zoro hadn’t thought so.) “But you could’ve made it hard for us! It could’ve been like a treasure hunt or something! Wouldn’t that’ve been cool?”

Whatever this kid has been drinking, Zoro wants none of it. “Not really. You make a habit of chasing down strangers to recruit ‘em?” he drawls, nodding towards the boy at Luffy’s other side.

“Oh that’s Coby - Coby, say hi! He’s not a pirate - he’s gonna be a _marine_! There’s a marine base on this island, yeah? We gotta go check it out.”

“I think your friend can do better than the marine base here,” Zoro says carefully, aware of the hush that has befallen the room - the one that sinks into the town’s merry pastimes every time somebody mentions the marines, a stormcloud lingering but never breaking over the townspeople.

If Luffy notices it, then he charges straight through it. “Eh, really? Aww, but we came all this way! Guess we can hang out for longer then, eh Coby? Unless you wanna check it out anyway - we should check it out anyway, it’ll be fun!”

Coby nods, seeming to find some courage. “I suppose judging Captain Morgan for ourselves wouldn’t be - um - I’m sorry,” he says at the hush in the room, “Did I say something wrong…?”

“Man, everyone’s so jumpy in this town!” Luffy says, laughing in the face of the bar’s abrupt silence, slapping Coby on the back. The sound echoes like a gunshot across the room and many of the patrons startle, beer sloshing into their laps.

Zoro decides he’s had enough of this. “Get moving, moron,” he says, hauling Luffy out of his seat. He drags the squirming pirate by his collar and deposits him onto the street like he had with the marines just days before - minus the fire this time, minus the blood - and Coby slaps a few coins onto the counter before ambling after them like a skittish puppy.

“Marine base is that way,” Zoro directs, shoving Luffy down the street. “If you want to get killed, by all means, go ahead. I’m not joining you, so it’s not my problem.”

“Isn’t the dock that way?” Coby mutters, earning a withering glare from Zoro.

“You think I’m stupid?”

“No - no, of course not -”

“Yeah, really stupid!” Luffy disagrees. “‘Cause that’s definitely the way to - hey! Where’re you going? You haven’t joined my crew yet!”

Zoro ignores him, throwing up a dismissive hand as he stalks off. He doesn’t have anywhere particular in mind to go, but _away from Luffy_ is good enough for him. By some stroke of luck, Luffy and Coby don’t follow, but a few streets pass by before Zoro can find it in himself not to glance back every other step, hyper-aware that the straw-hatted pirate might throw himself around the corner. Luffy is definitely the persistent type, and Zoro sighs as he shoves his hands into his pockets, slowing his escape into a maundering stroll instead, kicking up the pebbles and dust as he wanders.

Walking into the marine compound is a sure-fire imprisonment sentence for Luffy - maybe even a death sentence. Zoro sighs at the thought, telling himself that he doesn’t care. Choosing piracy over upholding moral citizenship and dealing with the repercussions of that is Luffy’s decision, and Zoro isn’t responsible for some sunny-eyed kid he’s just met. He _is_ responsible for Rika and her mother, however, considering it was him that killed Chicken-butt’s dog and stood up to the marines, so it is with this in mind that Zoro backtracks to the inn to resume his guard.

Four streets he doesn’t recognise later, he turns a corner and finds, not Luffy and Coby, but a small unit of marines instead.

“Roronoa Zoro!” they call at the sight of him, as though Zoro needs to be reminded of his own name. There is a moment of pandemonium where the marines can’t seem to believe their luck, before one of them musters the courage to shout: “You are under arrest!”

“What,” Zoro says, blinking as the marines level their guns at him, safeties clicking off in unison. One of the men unrolls a bounty poster with Zoro’s blood-splattered face on it, and Zoro glowers at the frankly _pathetic_ number under his name.

“ _Hey_ , I’m worth way more than that!” he calls, vowing to bloody the marine responsible for the poster. The marines ignore him, edging closer with their weapons. Zoro clicks his tongue and glances back, spying an escape route but too prideful to take it, hand resting on Wadō Ichimonji’s hilt instead. Fighting these losers will be a piece of cake, and he figures since he _already_ has a bounty, then he can’t get into anymore trouble than what he’s already in. He _can_ increase his bounty however, and while Zoro considers himself neither a criminal nor a particularly lawful citizen, that terrible bounty is just something he can’t ignore.

“Come on then, come at me,” he goads, clicking his most faithful katana from its sheath. “Maybe I’ll even let you get a few lucky shots in, eh?”

“You should think twice before provoking us,” one of the marines retorts, not looking particularly threatening in his naval whites and stupid hat.

“Yeah!” another cries. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen at the inn, would we?”

“What a shame you’re so directionally hopeless,” says another, and the unit laugh like a honking gaggle of geese, their feathers ruffling proudly as Zoro refrains from attacking.

“You’re bluffing,” Zoro accuses - but still he hesitates, eyeing the gun barrels as they slowly surround him. The marines laugh ( _are we_ , they taunt, _yeah, you wanna bet?_ ) and one of them unclips a set of handcuffs from his belt, brandishing the thick restraints as one would approach a skittish animal with a cage.

Zoro’s lip rises, teeth bared. “Don’t kid yourself.”

Another marine waggles a transponder snail at him, the poor creature squirming as it’s shaken about. “Nothing’ll happen to that _poor, defenceless family_ if you come quietly.”

“Yeah? How stupid d’you think I am?” Zoro snarls, but his confidence is already wavering as the marines continue to laugh, the handcuffs spinning round and round the wrist of the man taunting Zoro with them. The transponder snail glances between the marines and Zoro nervously, and it’s the animal’s fear that persuades Zoro to re-sheathe his katana and accept that the lives of Rika and her mother are a risk he just cannot take.

He holds out his hands, jaw twitching. The marines still can’t seem to believe their luck.

“You won’t be going _anywhere_ with these handcuffs!” they declare, blabbering excitedly between themselves as they part Zoro from his katana. “You Devil Fruit users are _useless_ against seastone!”

 _Idiots_ , Zoro thinks, deciding to play along. That he is a Devil Fruit user is a notion that he definitely isn’t going to correct. A single pair of handcuffs won’t contain him, no matter what they’re made of. He’ll simply have to feign incapacitation until he has evidence that Rika and her mother are safe - or until he’s in the heart of the marine compound and has an excuse to beat Chicken-butt up, either or.

Since he’s a _criminal_ now, he might as well use this arrest to his advantage, after all.

 

 

 

The plan doesn’t exactly _go to plan_ , but Monkey D. Luffy is a confounding variable that Zoro hadn’t considered. Rather than shoving Zoro into a prison cell in the heart of the marine compound, the marines lead him to a courtyard just within the walls. It’s an open, baked-concrete field of dust and dehydrated stone, and the only thing to be seen is the lone wooden stake in the centre like a tombstone driven into the ground. The marines push Zoro onto his knees and tie his shackled wrists to the stake, and then apparently convinced that he is now nothing to fear, they jeer and laugh at him, poking him with the barrels of their guns. Zoro keeps his silence until they tire, and it is only once they have ambled off to report their success that he cranes his neck around to the person tied to the other side of the post.

“Hi!” Luffy chimes, and Zoro throws a curse up at the sun. “Are you going to join my crew now?”

Zoro turns away, letting his head rest against the post. The shackles clank together as he tries to get comfortable. He shuts his eyes, appreciating the warmth of the sunlight in a way that only a being of fire can.

“Where’s your friend?” he asks, not needing an answer to why Luffy, himself, is here. He had warned the straw hat wearing pirate that walking into a marine base is suicide, and he doesn’t feel any sympathy for the happy-go-lucky loser tied behind him. Coby, on the other hand, is apparently _not_ a pirate, so he might have escaped imprisonment and ultimate execution. Good for him.

“Eh, Coby? He’s probably giving Chicken-butt an earful.”

Zoro inhales slowly, wondering why fate hates him so much. “He doesn’t seem the type,” he says neutrally, deciding to pretend that Luffy hasn’t _somehow_ assigned Chicken-butt the same nickname.

Luffy’s pout is evident in his whining tone. “He _does_ look like a chicken butt.”

“No, not him. I’m not blind.” _How stupid do you think I am_ , Zoro doesn’t ask, because he already knows the answer to that.

“Oh you mean Coby! Yeah he’s scary when he’s angry!” Luffy laughs, throwing his head back so far that his hat brushes against Zoro’s hair. “I knew he had it in him. He was super cool at the inn.”

“You were at the inn?”

“Uh-huh. There were marines there, but I beat ‘em up.”

Well that solves one of Zoro’s problems. “Was everyone okay?”

 _Er no_ , Luffy says, and he’s probably rolling his eyes. “I _beat them up_.”

Never before has anybody tested Zoro’s hundreds of years of patiences like Luffy. “The bartender, idiot, not the marines. I don’t care about the marines.”

“You don’t? Great! Wanna join my crew?”

“No!”

The protest is ignored. “You can be my swordsman,” Luffy announces, wiggling around to try and blind Zoro with a smile. “Wait, where are your swords? You can’t be a swordsman without swords!”

“Oh what a shame,” Zoro drawls, trying not to look at the puppyish pout in the corner of his vision. “You can’t be a pirate captain without a crew.”

Luffy doesn’t hesitate in crashing the back of their heads together. “I so can! And I do have a crew! You’re on my crew!”

“I’m not on your crew!” Zoro argues, eyes watering with pain. He shoves back with his hands, punching Luffy so hard that the boy yelps. Luffy responds in kind, trying to dig his elbows into Zoro’s spine and bludger their crowns together, and for a minute or so they descend into a squabbling tangle of limbs and ropes, broken only by the occasional scratch of Luffy’s hat and the clank of Zoro’s cuffs.

“You’ll be on my crew once I get your swords back!”

“And how are you going to get my swords back when you’re _tied to a stake_? This is probably an execution courtyard. They’re just gonna come along and shoot you.”

“That’s fine! It won’t work because I’m made of rubber. But they don’t know that! So they’ll just shoot me and it won’t work and it’ll be _hilarious_.”

 _Amazing_ , Zoro thinks, ducking away from another headbutt. The marines here are so incompetent that they’ve pointlessly shackled a non-Devil Fruit user in seastone handcuffs, and then _not_ done the same to the actual Devil Fruit user in their midst.

“And what if they come at you with a sword?”

Luffy hisses through his teeth. One of Zoro’s headbutts struck him across the face and it sounds like his nose is clogged with blood. Zoro almost - _almost_ \- feels bad, but then Luffy says stupid shit like: “Then I’ll… _bite them!_ ” and he can’t bring himself to worry about a twit with this little self-preservation.

“Great. Good luck then,” Zoro says, deciding that he’s had enough. With hardly a thought, his shackles melt away and the wooden post begins to burn; he swears, his control abyssal, and tries to temper the scorching with his boot. This only results in him flicking cinders everywhere, but the sparks do have Luffy emitting an astonished _ooooh_ as Zoro chucks the bubbling remains of the handcuffs away.

“Aww, are we escaping now? That’s boring,” Luffy moans, not so much as batting an eyelash as Zoro frees himself.

“Not as boring as dying,” Zoro counters, and it sounds like a stupid argument to his ears, but Luffy takes a moment to think about it, sticking his tongue between his teeth in concentration. After an unnecessary deliberation - really, dying shouldn’t be a choice right now - Luffy voices his agreement and nods his straw-hatted head, before stretching out his wrists as one would pull a rubber-band and unties himself from the rope.

Zoro’s seen some weird shit in his life, but that has to top it all.

There’s a shout of alarm from across the courtyard, and the duo whirl around to spy the patrolling marines frantically calling for backup. Sirens begin to sound from within the compound, and marines from all across the base rush to surround the courtyard.

Luffy taps dirt from out of his flip-flops. Zoro scratches behind his ear, feeling his three gold earrings pitter-patter across his fingers.

“I’m gonna go find Coby and your swords!” Luffy declares, ever-enthusiastic despite the approaching squadron and their many rifles and blades. “Can you fight without them?”

Zoro rolls his eyes at the insult, but refrains from bragging. “Yeah,” he summarises, deciding it better that Luffy doesn’t know that he can set the sea aflame and melt down the sky if he wants. “I’m still not joining your crew though.”

Luffy only laughs before catapulting himself through one of the compound windows, glass and marines alike scattering in his wake.

Zoro won’t ever admit to being a tiny bit impressed.

 

 

 

The end of Captain Morgan’s reign comes at the hand of Luffy’s second self-catapult. Zoro would have gladly smashed the marine’s axe-hand into pieces himself, but the satisfaction he feels as Luffy flings himself out of _another_ window and crashes into the captain, hollering at the top of his lungs with Coby slung under one arm and Zoro’s katana slung under _Coby’s_ arm, is better than Zoro could have imagined. Coby doesn’t appear to agree, but when Zoro collects his swords and asks whether Chicken-butt has been dealt with, the kid lights up like the sun reluctantly crawling over the horizon to bring morning.

“Well I - I wouldn’t say _dealt with_ ,” Coby stammers, tapping his fingertips together in a nervous habit as Luffy slam-dunks Captain Morgan behind him. “But I did remind him that a marine’s _duty_ is to protect the people of this world and not - not take _advantage_ of them!”

“Yeah?” Zoro prompts, raising a brow.

“I may have hit him a few times with a book,” Coby clarifies, and Zoro supposes that Luffy was right about this kid all along.

“Hey Coby, guess what?” Luffy calls as he ambles over, Captain Morgan lying in a crumpled heap behind him. The remaining marines eye the trio nervously, but at the sight of their downed superior officer, they wisely refrain from picking a fight. The glint of Zoro’s teeth probably helps persuade them.

Coby accepts the back-slap with a squeak, dutifully encouraging the boundless pirate with a small, “What?”

Luffy beams. “Zoro’s gonna join my crew!”

Zoro only just finds it in himself to argue, and he fears that means he’ll be swayed. “No I’m _not_. Stop asking me, I’ve already made up my mind.”

“But I got your swords back.”

No matter how clever Luffy thinks he is, Zoro could have retrieved them himself, so he’s not grateful. “We never had a deal.”

“Yes we did,” Luffy says, persistent to the last.

Zoro would rather throw himself into the sea than restart that argument. “Why d’you even want me to join you anyway?”

“I like you,” Luffy says, as though that is enough of a reason. It’s _never_ enough of a reason. If Zoro could do anything simply because he _liked it_ , then he would not be chasing a legend while his sister watches on from her grave.

“I’m going to need the best crew ever if I’m going to be the Pirate King,” Luffy adds, and Zoro almost scoffs at the realisation that an ambition that foolhardy doesn’t surprise him in the slightest.

“And you want me on your crew despite knowing nothing about me?”

“Yep.”

 _What the hell_ , Zoro thinks. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s struggling in the face of Luffy’s stubbornness, but he _is_. “I don’t know anything about you.”

“Huh? Oh - _heeey_ , did I not say anything?” Luffy laughs, slapping Coby again, who seems more surprised at being remembered than the rough affection. “I’m Monkey D. Luffy! I use _they/them_ pronoun-thingies and I’m going to be the Pirate King!” And then they hold out their hand for Zoro to take, giving it a wiggle when Zoro fails to do so. “Come on, it’ll be an adventure! Don’t you have a dream to fulfill?”

“I’m going to be the World’s Greatest Swordsman,” Zoro hears himself admitting, glowering when Luffy’s eyes sparkle. “But I don’t need your help to do that.”

“Okay! Then I won’t get in your way,” says Luffy, still holding out their hand. They say this as though it’s easy, as though it’ll be something they can decide, in the end, unlike Fate’s will and a phoenix’s fire and how the stars shine together and the sea laps the shore, and Zoro shakes his head at the thought of Luffy’s impossible heart and knows, just as he knows how to Burn and rebirth, that this idiot will be the death of him one day.

But if anyone else should ask, Zoro will say that he sighed and took Luffy’s hand only to save himself from a lifetime of nagging from the future Pirate King.

 

 

 

**iii. falling**

The next crew member Luffy acquires is a navigator by the name of _Nami_ , and she’s just about as thrilled to be there as Zoro is. Luffy’s crew is going to be a motley collision of vagabonds, Zoro can already tell, and he kicks his legs over the side of their dinghy boat to snooze while the captain and reluctantly-appointed navigator bicker either side of the helm. Nami probably won’t stay long; she was even less inclined to join than he was, and she burns a white-fire lightning that Luffy is foolhardy to contain.

“You should stay 'cause I like you!” Luffy reasons, clutching onto their hat in case Nami punches them again. “Only people I like are crew!”

“Well I don't like _you_ ,” she argues, and though Zoro doesn't dare involve himself in the argument, he looks to the sky over Luffy's head and swears, _fires Burn me 'cause I like them._

Nami is not a phoenix by any means, but if she were, she could outplay Death’s fires better than Zoro ever can. Grudgingly, he comes to like her - enough to chase after her when she leaves.

They’ve acquired two more crew-members at this point, although only one of them is aware. The bad-mouthed, kind-hearted cook with lungs of smoke and lascivious declarations of affection will learn that Luffy has recruited him soon enough, and Zoro wishes he could see the expression on his stupid swirly face when he does.

As it stands, all Zoro can see is the mellow East Blue sky drifting oblivious over the shattered deck of the Baratie, the clouds bobbing like lazy wayfarers across a limitless sea. Distantly, seagulls and people alike are screeching, and the barrage from Don Krieg’s crew is an impossible rain in this sunny afternoon. Zoro can feel the rainwater too, hot salt like the cinders of his flightless wings pitter-pattering into his skin. His face is flushed with it, pride and embarrassment burning his body as red as the blood splattered over the deck. It’s his blood, he’s drenched in it, his torso carved open from shoulder to hip and his lungs sucking in each sharp, terrible breath through his ribcage. If this is Dracule Mihawk’s mercy, then Zoro can only _imagine_ his cruelty; he laughs at the thought, laughs so hard that he chokes on himself, on his blood, on his fire as it battles not to Burn him, and as his laughter descends into tears, Zoro holds up his sister’s blade. He can’t see anything beyond its white arch up to the sun, but he knows that the world is watching.

On a tiny boat with the promise at the Baratie behind him and the horizon ahead, Zoro does not Burn.

(He will not escape it again).

Nami returns to them in a straw hat and tears, and the crew of five sail on stronger than ever. To Usopp’s relief, the Merry is no worse for wear despite her kidnapping, although the same cannot be said for her crew. Luffy bounces back from injury just as they bounce back from everything else, but bruises and scars mar everybody else. Usopp is proud of his black-eye and Sanji is indifferent towards his injuries, and though Zoro claims to feel both about the grotesque wound that Mihawk inflicted, his crew members don’t feel the same about it. Blood drains from Usopp’s face every time he catches Zoro picking at his bandages, and blood drains from _Zoro’s_ face whenever he bumps into Nami in the confines of their ship. The lecture she bellowed at him is one he won’t soon forget, and Zoro swears his ears are still ringing even days after she flipped her shit at the sight of his wound.

He almost wishes he had Burned. At least he wouldn’t have to deal with Nami’s temper.

At least he wouldn’t have to deal with his captain believing he’s a traitor.

Zoro is not a nice person. He is the temper of fire and his will is the blaze of the flames; he is a sun confined to a body of feathers, of skin, of eyes of coal and a heart of gold, and his soul in a bonfire consuming the night. His many lives have only taught him many ways to die. He is a warrior, a swordsman, and a protector of this mortal crew; a crew who have no time for death and only time to shake the world, and Zoro will not have them perish before they fulfill their dreams.

He is not a _nice person_ , yes, but he is not cruel, or savage, or beyond all reason. He is not like the townspeople of Whiskey Peak with their facades of cheer and goodwill, who plot and sharpen their blades as the people they renown as guests slumber unaware in their homes. Keeping secrets and telling lies are a fine distinction, and though the Straw Hat crew are ignorant that one of their own is a phoenix, Zoro has never lied about who he is.

Luffy should know by now who Zoro is. They’ve been sailing together for months, picking up wayward crewmates, causing trouble, and earning a bounty against their names. There are many things they don’t know about each other - maybe things they’ll never know - but Zoro is assured that he knows _who_ his captain is. Luffy is simple only at first glance: their bright eyes and brighter grins hide a heart of the sea, a kind and dangerous, beautiful and wrathful thing that dreams too much but never enough. Luffy is not a hero, but they will help those they deem worthy and is loyal to a fault, and this they share with Zoro, who will protect his own until his Burning breath. Sure, Nami’s a money-grabbing witch, Usopp’s a coward, and Sanji’s gushing is an embarrassment that even _Zoro_ feels, but they’re crew - they’re _nakama_ , as Luffy would say.

At least, Zoro had thought they were. He's not so certain now that the blood on his swords - the Baroque Works’ - means more to his captain than the blood that bespatters Zoro’s face; his own blood, painted there by rubber knuckles and fists that slam into skin and bone. Luffy had not hesitated before launching themself into the brawl. They had waddled through the doorway behind which their nakama slept unawares, hat bouncing at their shoulders and flip-flops slapping against the sand and the gravel, and Zoro had turned to them like a sunflower to day, like a dog to a bone, to the hand that feeds it, loves it, and throws it away.

“Luffy,” he had called and earned a fist in reply.

Around them, the Baroque Works officers play their parts as the cowards they are, dramatising their injuries and lamenting their lies. They swoon in the aftermath of Zoro’s “unjust rage,” scrabbling to hide their pistols and knives. There’s little need for such haste; Luffy is stubborn and their gut quick to deduce, and now that they have cast blame upon Zoro, they will be blind to the townspeople’s weapons until they stab them in the back.

Zoro should let them. He considers it - the moment Luffy’s second strike hits hard, rubber slamming against the flat of Zoro’s palm, the pain of betrayal shuddering up his arm, the second strike an intention where the first might have been a mistake, Zoro considers it. He could throw a punch back, toss Luffy to the assassins in the night. He could use Wadō Ichimonji to maim, not block, and show his captain the phoenix’s true flame.

He doesn’t. He doesn’t want to hurt Luffy, doesn’t even want to _touch_ them, not with these hands of fire and a body of cinders confined, but he is not swift enough to dodge his captain’s fury.

The only blood in the dirt is Zoro’s.

The moon looms over the sky.

“Listen to me!” Zoro tries, diving away from one of Luffy’s pistol-like throws. Grazes colour his hands and knees and his earrings swipe through the blood clotting on his cheek. Luffy is unstoppable, a sun blazing in gold and far above reason, their body burning through the feast and alcohol that the townspeople used to lure them in. In their rage, they are a glimpse of the person they will be one day, the Pirate King unconquered and free to sail this world of seas. They are powerful, relentless, and have the will of a King, and Zoro doesn’t know how to calm them, doesn’t know how to stop their wild accusations without resorting to fire.

He attempts it anyway, fearing not for his safety, but for his place on the crew. “These people - they’re from the Baroque Works!”

“SHUT UP,” Luffy roars, crashing against the flat of Zoro’s blade. They’re beyond reason, beyond being _yelled at_ , even, and their kick swishes over Zoro’s head, one heel of a flip-flop brushing the tip of his hair. “THEY WERE NICE TO US. YOU HURT THEM!”

“They were trying to kill you!”

Luffy’s fist _cracks_ into Zoro’s jaw; he spits blood, spits teeth, almost bites off and spits out a chunk of his tongue. He stumbles, raising Wadō Ichimonji to block the next strike, the gleam of her huntress edge parrying blow after blow. Luffy snarls and Zoro snarls back, curling a lip over a mouthful of blood. He thinks he’s lost an earring to the dirt, the chiming at his ear not its typical tune, but Luffy’s accusations bellow far louder than the chink of gold, the pounding in Zoro’s head, and even the shouts of the girl with the turquoise hair as the Baroque Works laugh at a plan well-devised.

“I can’t believe you,” Luffy wheezes, hands clenched at their sides as they loom over Zoro, the tiny adolescent with the goofy smile no more. Conflicting emotions bespatter their face like the blood that splatters Zoro’s, and they grind their teeth together to the sound of the swordsman dragging himself up from the dirt. “I thought - I thought -”

Zoro can feel his fire heating his skin to scorch off the bruises and boil away the blood, but the pain of betrayal lingers even as he heals.

“I trusted you,” Luffy says.

“Guess we were both stupid,” Zoro agrees.

“You said _that right_!” Nami shrieks, her fist swinging out of the gloom to clobber the captain into the ground. Awed hush falls about the town, the laughter from the Baroque Works silencing at the new competitor, and Zoro’s fires flicker with satisfaction as Luffy whines, cradling their head at Nami’s feet.

“And _you_!” she continues, rounding on Zoro with a thunderous expression. Three terrifying strides of her high-heels closes the distance between them, and Zoro flinches away as she jabs a finger at him. “Don’t think you’re getting away scot-free! The hell are you two _doing_ brawling out here like a pair of idiots?”

She throws a hand out to punch him too, or snatch his collar, maybe seize his ear, and Zoro jerks back so violently that he almost pitches _himself_ into the dirt. Fire crackles where she could have slapped him, his hair spitting cinders, and Nami recoils with a staggered expression, specks of flame hissing against her skin. She whirls around before it’s clear what has angered her - the flinch or the flame - and the look on her face must be a terrible one, for those in the Baroque Works who have lingered to witness the fight all scramble to flee at the sight.

Only the girl with the blue hair and her beanie-wearing, bear-sized duck remain. She introduces herself as _Vivi_ , the Crown Princess of the kingdom of Alabasta, and the duck puffs his feathers out with pride. Sanji is instantly smitten (the twit), and the promise of untold riches in return for helping Vivi overthrow the Baroque Works has Nami’s eyes sparkling a beli-green. The prospect of this adventure enamours Luffy too, and as Usopp shuffles into the conversation with a blearily-eyed yawn, Zoro sheathes his katana, his bloodied face the sole remnant of the brawl.

Vivi explains that the townspeople of Whiskey Peak are members of the Baroque Works, and Luffy laughs as though they have any right to be astonished by this revelation. They slap her on the shoulder, accepting her word as truth, and Vivi squeaks at the contact. This prompts Nami and Sanji to rise to her defence, fussing over the Princess and berating the captain for crossing boundaries respectively, and Luffy laughs at them too - laughs the whole way back to the Merry, in fact, as though they haven’t got a care in the world.

Zoro hunches down into the crow’s nest because he doesn’t know where else to go.

He snoozes through breakfast, chasing the sleep that he lost to the Baroque Works. He skips lunch too, ignoring how the cook spits smoke from the deck, and watches the cloudless sky blur into the sea as the Merry sails into the afternoon. Zoro has never wanted to fly in this life before, and he fears that if he could, in this moment, set apart from a crew by mistrust and deception, alone in the crow’s nest and a wing’s breadth from the sky, then he would.

He would raise himself to the sun that will never betray him and fly from this life for good.

(Perhaps it’s just as well that he can’t).

Nami brings him dinner, shoving the box of his serving under his chin as she squishes herself into the crow’s nest. They sit parallel to each other because it’s the only way they can, knees bent to fold themselves into the space, and Zoro grumbles when she has him move his katana to make room. Truly, he’s glad for the mast between them, all too aware of the pain he can cause. She may not have noticed his cinders on Whiskey Peak, but Zoro’s skin feels as dry as ash, and his hands are sweaty, liable to burn. He could dry up this ocean if he wanted; he could incinerate everything under the sun.

“I’m not going to ask you if you’re hurt, but I hope you’ve at least applied some antiseptic and gauze if you are,” Nami says, eyeing him critically. “Luffy’s acting as stupid as ever, but it’s not like you to hide up here instead of swinging those weights around.”

“I’m not hiding,” Zoro retorts; there’s nowhere _to_ hide on this ship, so he can’t be hiding.

Nami rolls her eyes. _Wow_ , her expression seems to deadpan. “You’re _sulking_ ,” she accuses instead, and that doesn’t sit any better with Zoro, who _certainly_ isn’t sulking either, no matter how perceptive Nami may be.

He grumbles, “What do you want,” and Nami smacks his leg.

“To see if you’re _okay_ , dummy. You and Luffy weren’t fighting for the hell of it, were you?”

Zoro starts eating in lieu of gracing that with an answer.

“What were they angry about?” she presses, where anybody else would offer, _you want to talk about it_? Zoro definitely doesn’t want to talk about it, but no doubt that’s the reason Nami skipped wasting her breath to ask. She’s annoying like that - she knows him well enough to _know that_ , unlike Luffy, who probably doesn’t know him at all.

“Hey,” Nami says, softer this time as she nudges him with a toe. “I’ll have to beat it out of them if you don’t tell me.”

“Good luck with that,” Zoro grumbles, trying to wiggle himself further away from her without making it too obvious. “They don’t have a clue.”

“They asked where you were at lunch.”

Zoro laughs, doubting that the food is the cause of the bitter taste in his mouth. “That’s ‘cause they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong.”

“And what do you think?” Nami asks - and that’s the million beli question, isn’t it? If Luffy had stopped to think for two seconds before throwing punches, stopped to wonder if their crewmate _maybe_ has something to say, an opinion, a _reason_ , the _truth_ , then Zoro wouldn’t be here getting interrogated. But there’s a reason that Luffy jumped the gun, and Zoro shrugs, reluctant to admit that he shares in the blame. He should’ve given Luffy a reason to trust him. That he thought he had but apparently _hasn’t_ is a result of his own misjudgement, not Luffy’s. He cannot find the words to explain this to Nami, but he is unsure if she - a thief who mistrusts by default - would really understand.

“I’m probably overreacting,” is what he decides to say. Nami emits a noise that suggests she doesn’t believe him, but Zoro doesn’t clarify, knowing the statement to be a lie.

 

 

 

Cutting his feet off is a decision Zoro reaches in panic. It is logical although he hasn’t the words to explain how; he is a phoenix, he cannot die, and his flames may prevent such severe, self-inflicted wounds. He has no idea. The wax may melt away if he sets it aflame, but he scorched Nami at Whiskey Peak and he almost hurled his fires at Luffy, so if Zoro has to risk burning anybody because of his own mistakes, then he’d rather lose his feet than cause anymore harm to the crew.

He gets as far as blood-splattered wax and a sword gorging out his flames before Nami and Vivi scream at him to stop, before the wax snuffs him anyway, before Luffy crashes in, fists swinging, heart blazing, laughing uproariously as they save the day. The crew return safely to the Merry, wax-free and all limbs attached, and once a course is set and the open ocean promises adventures before them, Nami snatches Zoro’s shirt and drags him into the kitchen. Zoro has two seconds to be grateful that he’d had the foresight not to heal himself and deal with _that_ bucketload of questions before Nami, quite frankly, _flips her shit_.

Zoro swears his ears are still ringing from her _Mihawk-did-WHAT_ lecture on Arlong Park, so he is wise to dread the gleam in her eyes as she slams the kitchen door shut and all but throws him into a chair. Sanji - poor, hopeless, love-struck Sanji, oblivious to the impending storm as he fusses with lunch - does not have this forewarning, and Zoro would feel a _teeny_ bit sorry for him were he not too busy attempting to achieve invisibility in his chair.

Nami’s passive-aggressive attempt at sewing him back together is definitely on the _aggressive_ side. _You’re going to get yourself killed_ , she grumbles as though she, herself, isn’t seconds away from mass-murdering the entire band of idiots on the crew (her words), and Zoro just grunts an agreement that has her driving the needle into his calf.

“You’re not supposed to agree,” Nami snaps, auburn hair falling over her eyes. Zoro can’t see what expression she is wearing but, truthfully, he doesn’t want to know, and instead he fixes his gaze on the ceiling and tries not to ignite at every tender - and not so tender - touch of Nami’s hands.

 _Sorry_ , he almost says, but cannot bring himself to.

If Nami does as promised and beats an explanation for Whiskey Peak from Luffy, then Zoro never finds out. She falls ill as they sail on through the Grand Line, collapsing to a fever that has her bedridden for days. Though she insists that she’s fine, that she can navigate still, the rest of the crew fuss and fret. Neither Luffy or Sanji seem to know what to do with themselves. Sanji slaves away in the kitchen, producing hot drinks and soups and all manner of comforting meals; Nami isn't in any state to appreciate his efforts, which only distresses the warbling cook further. Luffy defaults to silence at her bedside, a phenomenon that unnerves the crew more than they would like to admit. _Quiet_ is not a state Luffy reaches even in slumber, so their sentry is both worrying and gratifying to see: Luffy will do anything for Nami, that much is clear, and Zoro tries not to let this dedication bother him. Watching a crewmember possibly _dying_ is no time to be petty about Luffy’s mixed signals, so Zoro keeps his mouth shut and does his best not to blow up as Luffy continues to pretend that Whiskey Peak never happened.

The wounds at his ankles heal, but Luffy never asks about those either.

When the ship docks at the snow-capped island of Drum, Zoro opts to stay behind. Somebody has to guard the ship, so it may as well be him; Nami will be safe with Luffy and Sanji, possibly the safest anybody can ever be, and Vivi refuses to leave her side. Usopp is brave but not yet brave enough to watch the Merry on his own, but when he glances between Vivi and Zoro, sleet-frizzy curls bouncing as he decides who to accompany, Zoro offers a glare to drive the point home.

 _Leave me alone_ , Zoro thinks, and Usopp swallows and nods before scampering after the crew.

Carue remains behind, but not due to a resilience against Zoro’s flare, that’s for sure. He is loyal to Vivi though, painfully loyal, for all that he squawks and complains and shakes beneath his cotton beanie, and so it is only with a half-hearted sigh that Zoro doesn’t scare Carue off too. But even if he did, Zoro doubts that Vivi would rebuke Carue’s presence (his friendship and affections), unlike somebody that Zoro knows, and it is with this realisation that he is comparing himself to an oversized, daffodil-yellow duck that drives Zoro to the helm, where he can swing dumbbells in peace.

Carue watches at him from the main desk, beak tucked into his feathers to stave off the weather. He warbles occasionally, less like a bird and more like a cat, frightened by the muffled noises in the snow. Zoro has to make an effect not to fetch him a blanket, lest Carue mistakenly assume that they’re bonding - man to duck, bird to bird.

The cold doesn’t bother Zoro much, but the snow does, its cloud-cover blocking out the sun. Snow dusts the ship in white, like icing atop the cakes that Sanji bakes so fondly. It’s pretty, like dazzling, cold ashes that evaporate against Zoro’s skin. But the ship doesn’t quite run as hot as he does - rightfully so - and soon the snow starts to pile onto the deck, weighing heavy the sails and freezing Nami’s trees.

Zoro sets his dumbbells aside, knowing that he cannot leave the Merry to suffer. Clearing the deck is simple enough, although he feels foolish pacing back and forth as the snow sizzles beneath his feet. The sails are a harder challenge, and the trees harder still. Carue looks on with his big, watery eyes as Zoro clambers about the rigging, willing the sails not to catch alight at the gentlest touch of his hands.

“If you say anything to Vivi,” Zoro threatens, even as he relinquishes and fetches Carue a blanket from below deck. “I’ll roast you.”

Carue quacks, tail wagging happily as Zoro bunches the blanket around him. He lifts up a wing and gives it a shake, and for a moment, Zoro is clueless as to his intention, until Carue reaches out and _bops_ his feathers against his waist.

“Hell no. I’m not _cuddling_ with you.”

Carue bumps him again, quacking for emphasis. Then when Zoro turns to march away, he snaps forward and latches onto his trousers, tugging sharply. Zoro glares at him, proclaiming quite vehemently that he _does not need a hug_ , and as the snow trickles down and the ship sways along the coastline, the mountains of this island towering like watchmen over the land, Carue stares right back.

“Five minutes,” Zoro grumbles, accepting his fate. As he settles down at Carue’s side, one of Carue’s wings draping over him as a mother would blanket her ducklings, Zoro wonders if this is for his benefit at all. After all, it is he, not Carue, that burns like a furnace, like a bonfire blazing on a chill, winter night. Carue is probably just using this to his advantage - sly, for his outrageous lack of subtlety - and Zoro’s mouth twitching unbidden into a smile.

Five minutes pass, and then ten. Zoro doesn’t intend to get distracted, but Carue’s feathers are soft where they brush over his shoulders; he jerked away, at first, from the touch against his neck, but now he runs his fingertips through the feathers, pushing them up and smoothing them down. Carue doesn’t seem to mind: if he feels a little warm under Zoro’s touch, then he makes no sound of complaint, and Zoro grows more confident as his fear of burning Carue wanes.

“Can you fly?” Zoro asks, receiving a shake of Carue’s head in reply. Sympathy swells up inside of his chest and he pats Carue’s feathers, as though rearranging them will gift him with flight.

“Nah, me neither,” he says. “But I guess that’s just as well.”

Carue warbles. Zoro shoots him an unimpressed glare.

“I’m not sulking. I don’t need to fly anywhere. Got the Merry, haven’t we?”

Provided Zoro remains with the crew, of course - which he will, because he cannot imagine being anywhere else (except with a captain that trusts him without question, perhaps). The crew are his family and he will do anything for them, just as he had almost Burned himself out trying to save Kuina. He would leave, he is sure of it, if Luffy truly wished him to, but it is Luffy’s mixed messages that are confusing him. Their actions on Whiskey Peak would suggest that they want Zoro gone, except they have welcomed, or at the very least relented to, Zoro’s continued presence on the ship.

Zoro doesn’t understand what that means. Was Whiskey Peak a mistake, or was it a hint to how Luffy really feels?

He leans back into Carue’s side, squinting as the snow settles onto his face. The scar that Mihawk inflicted tugs as Zoro follows the cotton-like skyline over the strange, drum-like mountains of the island.

“You got any idea what Luffy’s thinking?”

Carue’s stomach rumbles.

Zoro laughs. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

Nami survives, but there was hardly any doubt. It isn’t concern that implores Zoro to leave Merry in Carue’s care and trek up the mountainside himself, but something does, and so into the blizzard Zoro goes. He borrows a coat on the way only because the townspeople gawk and call him crazy, bundling him in layers before he can argue. They offer him directions to the doctor’s castle as well, and Zoro begrudgingly thanks them for their generosity and vows not to burn the outlandish coat before the day’s end.

At the top of the mountain, Luffy stands victorious upon the castle’s highest turret. A charred jolly roger flies beside them, and down in the snow below, a cranky old woman and a gigantic, blubbering raccoon dog look on with pride. Zoro feels a rush of fondness that he hurriedly tries to quell; he’s supposed to be angry, not worried as though a bed of ashes burns under his skin. But then Luffy is grinning and laughing and introducing the massive racoon dog as crew, and Zoro’s heart is a stupid and loyal thing.

Chopper is both wary and over-thrilled to join the crew, and his perpetual state of indecision is endearing. His shy countenance and terrible hiding brings out a more protective side of the crew, and so they go out of their way to ensure that Chopper is comfortable - or as comfortable as possible amongst the daily mayhem of the Straw Hat pirates. He tails Luffy, Nami, and Sanji mostly, although it does take a few days for Chopper to realise that Sanji doesn’t intend to follow through with his ‘emergency food supply’ threat. His skills as a doctor aren’t in question, not with how he fusses over Nami when she so much as sneezes. She humours him in a way that she seldom has before, but Zoro can understand that. He, too, tries not to be so gruff when Chopper is around, but if how Chopper continues tiptoeing around the deck as Zoro lifts his weights is any indication, then Zoro doesn’t do a very good job.

Vivi and Usopp have an easier time making friends with the little doctor. Usopp, especially, seems to encourage a young, dazzling look in Chopper’s eyes, and so with Luffy thrown into the mix, the Merry soon echoes with delighted shrieking and laughter.

By the end of Chopper’s first week aboard, Zoro has almost forgotten his reservations concerning Whiskey Peak. Luffy, certainly, appears to have disregarded the ordeal, but then little is as important in their eyes as food and fun. Eventually, Zoro resolves to do the same; doubt will only hinder him (and he has a promise to Kuina to keep), and since Luffy has yet to send Zoro packing, then they can only have no intention of doing so.

Of course, by now, Zoro should’ve learned that Luffy is always a surprise.

Sprawled out under the sun by the staircase and not quite dozing, Zoro knows when Chopper approaches - warily, still a reindeer with prey instincts despite the Devil Fruit he has consumed - and thinks little of it. Chopper has spent the past few days watching him, gauging his “over-excessive” training regime and his unsociable, guarded demeanour, no doubt, so Zoro has been expecting Chopper to finally pluck up the courage and say something. What he isn't expecting, however, is the prod of a hoof against his thigh, a harmless test to see how deeply he slumbers, the touch of a child seeking attention. He jerks back immediately and snaps awake to warn Chopper away, but before he can so much as glare at the startled doctor, one of Luffy’s arms comes hurtling across the ship and scoops Chopper up, snatching him away. He only disappears for a moment, for then Luffy appears with a bounce and a laugh, skidding to a halt at Zoro’s feet with Chopper screaming bloody murder in their ear.

“Chop _per_ ,” Luffy croons, popping the ‘p’ with a smile. They repeat Chopper’s name three more times as they set him down, gently poking his little blue nose for good measure. “You shouldn’t sneak up on Zoro while he’s asleep. He doesn’t like hugs, ‘kay? Although you _are_ super small and _super cute_ so he might let it slide - whatcha think?”

Chopper emits a hopeful little noise that has Zoro swallowing hard. His gut reaction is to ensure that Chopper stays as far away as possible - because he _is_ small and cute, dammit - but the combined effect of Luffy and Chopper’s puppy-dog eyes has Zoro sighing instead. He tries to keep prolonged periods of physical contact with the rest of the crew to an absolute minimum, but it’s true that he hadn’t harmed Carue on Drum. Maybe Chopper, who has fur rather than skin just as Carue has feathers, will be okay to touch from time to time.

“Maybe,” Zoro decides, not wanting to sound overly eager or reluctant either way. “Not while I’m asleep.”

“See? Zoro’s not so scary!” Luffy says, patting the top of Chopper’s hat. “He’s grumpy an’ stupid but he’s my swordsman so that means he watches out for everyone on the ship. He’s _crew_ , so that means he’s a good guy, yeah?”

“Yeah!” Chopper says with a vigorous nod of his head, wiggling happily. Only, it isn’t Chopper who Luffy is looking at, and Zoro’s shoulders tighten under the weight of Luffy’s gaze. It’s a heavy weight, full of a meaning, a promise, an _apology_ that Chopper knows nothing about, and for a moment, the only thing Zoro is aware of is the scar at his chest and the sea salt in the air, but then his shoulders loosen and the burn behind his ribs eases away.

“Aye captain,” he says, and then he shuts his eyes before he can see whatever expression Luffy wears in reply.

 

 

 

Portgas D. Ace is made of fire. Zoro doesn’t mean to stare, but ever since Luffy’s brother stepped onto the Merry, a hat at his shoulders and the mark of a pirate at his back, Zoro has been unable to take his eyes off of the man who blazes so similarly to him. Nobody else appears to notice that Ace breathes like a bonfire and laughs as the forest fires burn and burn and burn; maybe they think he’s normal, compared to Luffy, who has the will of a phoenix and the heart to match.

No, Ace isn’t a phoenix. He’ll burn and he’ll die just as humans do. But Zoro thinks, as he watches, as he feels the heat of Ace’s skin in his handshake and in the clap of a palm against shoulder, that something about Ace will live on all the same.

“Ace can do fire like you can!” Luffy says, smiling as bright as the blaze that fuels Ace’s speeder as he shrinks across the waters and disappears into the horizon. They wave even when Ace is far out of sight, as though the sun and the skies and the promise of adventure clasps the outstretched reach of their hand. It is apparent, however, despite how Luffy’s gaze turns not from the waves, that they are addressing Zoro now, whose arms are crossed and jaw drops slack in surprise.

“Don’t you remember?” Luffy continues, laughing at the thought of holding something so insignificant as a memory over their nakama. “At Shells Town! We were tied to that stake out in the courtyard and Coby went to beat up that axe-guy with a book! And we were headbutting each other and it was really funny and then you ruined it by melting the handcuffs!”

The surrounding crew emit curious noises; Usopp looks to Nami for guidance, but she shrugs, even she not privy to the tale of how the Straw Hat Pirates were formed. Zoro couldn’t care less if they know or not - it’s not as though he and Luffy have kept it a secret. Rather, the story of Shells Town and Coby and the fight with Captain Morgan are irrelevant now, not with the sun promising Raftel before them and the earth of lost-things and old memories behind.

At least, that’s what Zoro had thought. But now Luffy swings down from the banister and folds their arms up behind their head, still laughing at the crew’s varying expressions of surprise.

“Zoro did _what_ with the handcuffs?” Sanji asks. A lit cigarette bounces between his teeth as he speaks, and as Zoro picks up his jaw from the deck and tries to level his expression into a neutral indifference, he wonders what is it with this crew and flame. Nami’s eyes gleam with it. Usopp manipulates it and Sanji wields it. Vivi feels it deep in her heart. And even Chopper, little, gentle Chopper, fights it with the touch of his hands. They all use it in their own way, in their eyes and hands and hearts, and maybe that’s what draws Zoro to them - maybe that’s what draws them all to Luffy, living as the sun as they do.

“Well he made ‘em really hot and -”

“We know what _melting_ means, dipshit,” Sanji interrupts, tapping away some of the ashes. He rolls his eyes and glowers at Zoro instead, as though he truly believes that Zoro will be more forthcoming with an answer. “You got a Devil Fruit or something you wanna tell us about, moss-head?”

 _Or something_ is definitely on the right lines. For a moment, Zoro considers coming clean about what he is - who is he, who he was, who he will be one day (who knows) - but something holds him back. He cannot pinpoint what, or why - only, at the thought of dragging _I’m a phoenix_ from the depths of his chest and up through his throat, across his tongue, and out of his mouth, he feels his stomach tighten with unease. He wouldn’t describe it as _fear_ \- he’s not scared, he wouldn’t be scared of this. And yet the matter remains that something discourages him from speaking - discourages him from revealing the lie he’s been living all along.

“No,” is what he decides, and if the crew were expecting anything else, then they all hardly bat an eye.

Nami seems inclined to believe him. “He would’ve drowned a dozen times already.”

“Yeah he jumps in after me all the time!” Luffy agrees, which is something Zoro would rather _not_ have to do, but with a captain like Luffy, there’s no helping it. “That’d be really stupid if he had a Devil Fruit!”

“Luffy, _you’ve_ jumped in after Chopper before,” Usopp says.

“He was drowning!”

Usopp opens his mouth to argue and then thinks better of it. Instead, he casts a forlorn gaze at Nami in the hope that she’ll help, to which she rolls her eyes and sighs her _everyone is stupid_ sigh. It’s a sound that frequents the Straw Hat crew, and so it comes as no surprise when Nami claps her hands together and orders everyone back across the deck. The Merry, after all, cannot sail herself, and now that Ace is behind them and Alabasta is before them, there is only a matter of days before they reach the kingdom that Vivi loves so well. With this in mind, the crew race apart to their duties, the question of Zoro’s fire-wielding ability temporarily forgotten in the face of adventure.

(Or so he hopes).

There is no doubt in Zoro’s mind that the coming days will be bloody and chaotic - and much to Luffy’s design. He grins as he ducks around the rigging, eager to test his swordsmanship. The Baroque Works at Whiskey Peak were hardly a challenge; _Luffy_ was a challenge, but one he hopes not to repeat. He isn’t worried for the crew though. They are strong - already, so much stronger than they were before - and now they have a doctor who can heal almost any wound. Zoro, of course, could heal himself if he wasn’t trying _not_ to out himself, and that’s one good reason to divulge his nature to the crew, he knows.

(Mihawk would not have scarred him, for one. But then Mihawk might not have walked away from that fight at all).

 

 

 

The Alabastian desert is almost too much for the Straw Hat crew. It feels as though they are walking only a step away from the sun, slowly baking on an ocean of golden, shattered glass and sands. Vivi’s warnings fail to prepare the crew for the never-ending heat, but it is her fear for her country that drives them on regardless. Zoro does his best to pretend that the heat is bothering him, but he finds that he likes the sensation of the sunlight scorching into his skin. He wasn’t sure he would, not with how he actively avoids igniting fire in his hands, but there is something comforting about a fire that isn’t his own. He has half a mind to flop into the sand and let the desert swallow him, let it surround him with warmth as the ashes from his Burning have and will. It is a primal want - and gods does he _want_ it, wants to feel the heat against his feathers and challenge the midday sun with his flame - and it is one that Zoro shoves aside.

Alabasta is a far cry from the bitterness and snow of Drum. Chopper, more than anyone, with his fur and a childhood lived in the mountains and cold, struggles with the sweltering temperature. Usopp hammers together something of a sleigh when they pass through a deserted village - yet another one, and Vivi’s worries grow - and Chopper all but collapses onto it in relief. Zoro pulls him along amidst jokes about _pack mules_ and _horses_ , but eventually even Sanji starts to regard the sleigh with an envious eye.

As cold as the desert days are hot, the nights are long and dark. Shelter is near impossible to come by in the desert, but the crew are accustomed to dividing the nights into shifts. Even Vivi volunteers for the watch, but it’s no surprise that she is restless now that she is surrounded by the familiarity of home. Usopp, on the other hand, sleeps like a log (and poor Chopper, still panting, sleeps like the dead), and so the others rotate the watches between themselves: Vivi and Zoro first, Sanji second, then Nami and Luffy, and finally Zoro again. Everyone bar Zoro bundles themselves in blankets, and he simply sits with Carue at his side. Vivi smiles as though privy to the secret she surely cannot understand, but if Carue has told her anything about what Zoro is, then she doesn’t say a word.

Nothing apart from, _Carue really likes you_ , at any least. Zoro blames the campfire for the added burn to his cheeks, and Vivi only laughs.

On the third night, Luffy joins Zoro for the last watch. Dawn approaches, scattering the forest of stars that cluster over their heads (brighter and far more brilliant than they have ever seen). Zoro has passed most of the night counting them all. Around him, the camels and the crew sleep peacefully, and the silence is so overwhelming that he almost feels lonely. He's not used to feeling lonely, not even as the last of his kind. He seldom dwells on thoughts like that; at least, he used not to, but now he knows companionship and has found a home in this vagabond crew, and the thought of being without them has him feeling lonely after all.

Luffy doesn't say anything at first, settling down at Zoro’s back. There's no real need for it; Zoro can watch the entire night by himself, and he certainly doesn't need somebody protecting his back. But Luffy is Luffy and they will do as they will, and their presence eases Zoro’s ache of loneliness, if nothing else.

(Luffy’s presence means _plenty_ else, but Zoro has yet to decide exactly how he feels about that).

“Zoro lied, didn't he?” Luffy asks. Their straw hat scratches the back of Zoro’s neck as they tip their head back up to the sky, but Zoro finds that he doesn't mind.

Zoro's lied a lot in his life, but never about who he is. _What_ is he is another matter, but if he thought Luffy would care about that, then he never would have followed them to sea. This doesn't mean that admitting it is any easier. He's carried this secret for centuries. Nobody knowing that he is a phoenix is just as integral to his identity as actually _being_ a phoenix.

“About having a Devil Fruit?” Zoro hazards. “I ain't got one of those.”

Luffy hums, possibly believing him. The doubt stings in Zoro’s chest - even if it is well-deserved. The pain of Whiskey Peak still lingers despite his efforts not to dwell on that night, but he deserves the doubt now even if he probably hadn’t then.

“You've got something, but you don't wanna tell me what,” Luffy says, surer this time. Their voice is as light as the campfire, but it burns with the heat of the blaze. Zoro would never wish an immortal life upon anybody, but the fire in Luffy makes it hard not to dream.

“That's not true,” he grumbles, and he _feels_ rather than sees Luffy’s grin.

“Okay,” Luffy says, turning around in the sand. They rest their chin on Zoro’s shoulder, laughing quietly into his ear, and then squawks as Zoro bats them away. “Ahh, sorry sorry! I wasn’t try to hug you!! I'm happy you want to tell me, even if you can't.”

“Good, ‘cause I don't want you to _hug me_ ,” Zoro mumbles, even though he is pleased by Luffy’s words (by the acceptance, the trust), and this time Luffy’s laughter is loud.

“ _Now_ you're lying!” they holler, and Zoro slam-ducks them into the ground. Miraculously, their squabbling doesn’t wake the rest of the crew, but not for the lack of yelling on Luffy’s part. Zoro has to shove the captain’s head deep into the ground to get them to shut up, and Luffy snort-laughs so hard that it leaves them sputtering and choking in the sand. They could free themself if they truly wanted, and Zoro could burn a hole straight through their skull if -

He jerks away, clenching his hands into fists. Neither of his hands are burning and nor is Luffy, wiggling like a drowning fish in the sand. And yet Zoro’s heart hammers. Luffy coughs and laughs and rolls onto their back, trying to lick sand out of their mouth. They seem none-the-wiser about Zoro’s moment of terror, but as they spring back up and blind Zoro with a smile, there is something _off_ about their expression, something Zoro recognises as worthy of the captain underneath the glee.

“Zoro should know that I don’t give a damn where he’s from,” they say with that disarming grin, brushing sand from their hat.

“I - yeah,” Zoro says, thinking of ashes and tasting them on his tongue. He tries not to shove his hands under his haramaki in case they burn. “I know that.”

To which Luffy says, “Good,” and that - apparently - is that.

 

 

 

Rain falls on Alubarna once again. The exhausted Straw Hat crew sleep the days away, sheltered deep within the palace as the city resurfaces from the desert. Slowly, the people emerge from the brink of ruin, their lives budding in the hope of a better future. Vivi and her father have little time to reunite before recovering the kingdom's collapse is upon them, but Vivi takes it in stride. She was born to rule, not to sail, and as Zoro passes the days watching over the crew, he knows that she will remain in her country, no matter how much the crew wish her to stay.

When Vivi has the time to sit with the slumbering crew, Zoro climbs up to one of the desolated towers to heal. It’s as close to the sun as he can be without stretching his wings (without seeing if they will, if they _can_ , if they'll lift the weight of Kuina’s dream). He kicks his legs out of one of the arched windows and sprawls back against the sill, basking in the midday heat. It’s a poor, distant substitute for the fire from his ashes, but he is not ready to feel the burn of those flames just yet. Mihawk still lives. Raftel still waits. Zoro has promises to keep.

He yawns, scratching beneath his haramaki at the scar that Mihawk inflicted. One day he will be strong enough to parry any blade. The World’s Greatest Swordsman can be nothing less - Luffy, the future King of the Pirates, deserves nothing less. The Straw Hat crew are making a name for themselves; soon, the entire world will hear of their will, and their call will draw enemies from far and wide. But the Grand Line is nothing to scoff at. They need to be ready for their next challenge - a harder challenge - and for a life of danger beyond that.

Excitement burns in Zoro’s chest like the heat of the sun.

Vivi doesn't sail with them. Even Nami mopes about it. Instead, they gain another crewmember in the form of Miss Sunday - or the archeologist _Robin_ , as Luffy introduces with a laugh. The rest of the crew are less enthusiastic about their stowaway, even the cook, whose heart-eyes fail to hide his suspicion. Robin seems to have anticipated this, but if it bothers her, then her mask of indifference reveals nothing. In fact, it is Luffy who she appears most taken-aback by, but Luffy’s easy acceptance of the most wayward of people is still a surprise to Zoro, who has travelled with them the longest.

“She probably has ulterior motives,” Zoro confides one afternoon on the deck, bench-pressing the barbell that Luffy has chosen as their seat. Robin is never truly out of ear-shot with her Devil Fruit, but Zoro doesn’t care.

“So did Nami,” Luffy replies off-handedly, lounged across the bar as one would a sofa. “So did you. And Sanji.”

“ _You_ _stole my_ \- wait, the cook?”

Luffy just smiles, feet swinging over Zoro’s chest. Realising he won’t be getting an answer - and really not caring either way; Sanji’s past is his own - Zoro rolls his eyes and heaves the weights up once more, Luffy watching him all the while.

“I like Zoro,” they say.

Zoro lowers the barbell until Luffy is practically lying on his chest. “Thanks?”

Luffy laughs and pulls their hat over their face, clearly deciding that amidst Zoro’s workout is the best place for a nap. It’s hard to tell if they actually fall asleep, but Zoro can lift far heavier things, and he doesn’t have the heart to move them anyway.

 

 

 

“Zoro, Zoro, Zoro. We need to talk,” Usopp drawls later that week, shaking his head disapprovingly. He saunters over with the confidence of an upper-class business and gestures a moustache across his face, pinching his fingers as though to roll the hair into a spiral. He aborts a motion to throw an arm around Zoro’s shoulder; he’s so touchy-feely that refraining is hard for him to do. Instead, he starts playing with the imaginary moustache again; all he needs is a monocle and a top-hat to complete the act, but Zoro doesn’t want to encourage him.

“About what?” Zoro replies, abandoning his plan to salvage a bottle of beer from the kitchen. He shuts the door to the kitchen lest Sanji hear whatever embarrassing monologue that Usopp is about to spill, which is a wise decision, in retrospect, for Usopp clears his throat with an unnecessary vigour, and announces:

“About _love_.”

Zoro spins on his heel and flees.

“Whoa, whoa, wait, I wasn’t done!”

There’s only so far Zoro can run on the Merry, but he is still unfortunate enough to run into Robin. She is sipping a fruit cocktail as though she has any right to look as amused as she does, but her extra hands appear in a flurry of flower petals and push out the deck chair beside her. Zoro marches straight into it and then _over_ it, but fortunately - unfortunately - Usopp is there to help him back onto his feet.

“The advice of Captain Usopp will capture the heart of any man!” Usopp declares, tugging Zoro upright by his haramaki. He dusts Zoro down and then bundles him into the chair. “Why, the Great and Irresistable Captain Usopp has seduced many men and women in his time!”

“Help me,” Zoro pleads to the sky.

“I would be interested in hearing what Captain Usopp has to say, as well,” Robin says, leaning a smile into the palm of her hand. Zoro glares at her from across the table, trying to convey _don’t encourage him_ without hissing the words. Robin merely smiles, crow’s feet wrinkling at her eyes.

Usopp nearly trips over himself in surprise. “R-Really? Well then -” He whips out a notebook from his dungarees and flips through a few pages, finding what appears to be a short essay adorned with heart and arrow doodles.

Zoro grits his teeth. “I don’t need love advice.”

Usopp gives him a _look_ , but the effect is somewhat diminished by his long hot-dog nose.

Zoro considers snatching the notepad and shrivelling it into a crisp, but he’s not sure he wants to invoke Usopp’s wrath. He means well - the Great Captain Usopp - even if what he means is unnecessary. Zoro doesn’t need love advice because he isn’t in _love_ \- but even if he was, _even if he was_ , he doesn’t need seduction tips or _poetry recitals_ at a _tea-table_.

Usopp is oblivious to Zoro’s mounting despair, so he shoots a flat look at Robin instead.

“If I may, Mr. Longnose, I believe Mr. Swordsman would benefit from a simpler solution,” she says with a twinkle in her eye, stopping Usopp mid-rant. She smiles at his flabbergast expression and takes another sip of her drink, composed even as he flusters and coughs, flipping through his notepad for some sensible reply.

“Yeah,” Usopp says eventually, squinting at Zoro. “Yeah! B-But that’s all right, because Captain Usopp can provide any sort of advice!”

Zoro scrubs a hand over his face and wishes, for the second time, that he had the wings to fly.

“What sort of advice?” Luffy asks, rubbery head stretching down from the sails. Their hat drapes loosely from their neck, the string caught over their chin, and they smile large and bright from where they hang, upside down, over the table. “Ooh, what’re those drawings? Lemme see!”

Usopp’s gaze flicks from Luffy to the notepad and then back to Luffy.

 _Don’t you dare_ , Zoro thinks, but before he can voice anything, one of Robin’s hands appears and slaps over his mouth.

Usopp passes the notepad into Luffy’s eager hands.

“Oh cool! Usopp’s such a good artist! Hey, is that me? That looks like me! I look great! And you’ve even drawn Shanks’ hat. Hey, is that Zoro? Why’s he making such a silly face? He looks dumb. Zoro, look, you look so dumb!”

Luffy dangles the notepad in front of Zoro’s nose. His face burns so fiercely that he could ignite the paper just from the slightest touch, but this only seems to entertain Luffy more.

“I’ll throw you overboard,” Zoro threatens.

Luffy laughs. They flip another page of the notepad, eyes widening with glee.

Zoro lurches over the table, crockery clattering under his boots. Robin lifts her glass away just in time as he yanks Luffy from the rigging, the notepad, Shanks’ hat, and a flip flop flinging wide. Luffy squawks as they crash onto the deck, their rubbery body barely softening the scuffle as Zoro falls on top of them. Usopp yelps (“That wasn’t _quite_ what I meant!”) and Robin smiles around her drink, but Zoro ignores them both as he hauls Luffy up by their waist and staggers across the deck.

“Zoro’s gonna have to come in after me!” Luffy sputters, digging their foot into Zoro’s cheek. They grapple as Zoro lugs them to the side, Luffy twisting around to cling onto whatever part of the Merry they can.

“No I won’t.”

“Yes you -!” They hit the water with a resounding _splat!_ and from the lower deck, there is a terrified shriek from Chopper that has the rest of the crew scrambling above deck.

“AHHHH LUFFY’S FALLEN OVERBOARD.”

“Relax,” Sanji says, laying a hand on Chopper’s head to prevent him from jumping overboard in pursuit. “Zoro _threw_ them overboard. It’s your problem now, moss-head.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Zoro replies, setting his swords aside. He kicks off his boots too, not in any particular hurry, and then stretches his arms over his head, catching sight of a flock of sea-birds soaring under the clouds. For a moment, his fires burn inside of his chest, yearning for the sun, but then he leaps the side of the Merry and the ocean douses his flames.

He hauls Luffy back on board by the scruff of their collar. Luffy laughs, spewing a fountain of water onto the deck. Zoro wrings out his shirt, waiting for the automatic _told you so!_ but Luffy defies expectations once again:

“I knew Zoro wouldn’t burn me.”

Zoro pauses, momentarily thrown. Salt-water pools around him like a bed of ashes; he hates being wet, feeling cold and heavy under the sea. But he isn’t a Devil Fruit user no matter what the crew may think - if they even think it at all. Water doesn’t harm him as it harms Luffy: fire doesn’t harm him as it harms Luffy, and yet it isn’t Luffy who shies away.

He doesn’t know what to say. Speechless, Zoro tugs on his boots and scoops up his swords. He drops Yubashiri onto Luffy’s forehead because he doesn’t know what else to do - Luffy squawks and Zoro smirks - and then he sheathes it when it bounces back into his hand.

 

 

 

**iv. burning**

Skypiea is an island just a wingspan from the sun, so Zoro hates it on principle. He has nothing against the people who dwell there, whose wings are light and inefficient, and whose hearts sink into the clouds. They are a kind people, a scared people. They cannot and will never fly. Zoro doesn’t envy them as their wings are more useless than his own, and yet they live where the sky is clearer, where the storms gather and the air is crisp and free.

Or they would, were it not for Enel, the so-called “God” of the sky.

“He’ll bring lightning down upon us,” Conis weeps, curled up like a hatchling in the dirt. The tips of her wings fizzle from the thunderbolt, and even Zoro’s hair stands on end. “He’ll turn us into dust.”

“Not if I hit him first,” Luffy says, and that is exactly what they do.

The Light of Shandora rings again, and its song will be heard across the sea. Luffy calls out amidst its deafening sound, and the winged-people of Angel Island look up and shield their eyes from the golden sun. Zoro turns from the tower, to the horizon, to the sea, and though he feels the sun like feathers on his back, he looks out to the water for the promise of Raftel instead.

Skypiea is too familiar for him to stay. It called to him once and it will call it him again; he knows that he could roost here, that he could rest here an age or two. So close to the sun, he could burn in it forever. He could light this island even when the sun goes out, but he won’t, not as Zoro, not in this life, at least.

So close to the sun, and he misses the sea.

The canal-city of Water 7 would be a relief were it not for the news they receive there. Merry, their beloved, adventure-sailed Going Merry, is unfixable. To restore her to her former glory would be to tear her down and build her anew, replacing every plank and bolt and seafaring sail. She would not be the same as she rises again from the shipyard; she would be the Going Merry, but she wouldn’t be _their_ Going Merry.

 _It’s impossible to build your ship again_ , the shipwrights explain, the best of their craft. _We can build you a ship and name her the Merry, but she would not be the ship that sailed you across the sea_.

It is hard to hear. The shipwrights have nothing but respect to show the Merry, but if they say she cannot be fixed, then there is nothing to be done. Nami is confident they have enough money to commission another ship; money, for once, isn’t the issue. No, it is accepting that some things come and go, that some are inevitable, and that no two ships, no matter how similar they look, are the same.

The decision weighs heavy on the crew. They have to let Merry go.

“We should burn her,” Zoro suggests, and Usopp punches him in the face. Zoro’s fires rise in an instant to heal the damage, his jaw and cheek glowing with white-hot flames, and Usopp wails as the skin of his knuckles burns away. Chopper emits a shriek even louder than his and jumps over to help, but Nami scoops him up and out of the way just as Luffy steps in, planting themself in the centre of the crew.

Chopper quietens, clinging to Nami’s arm like a lifeline. Her face is as hard as diamond, but there is a quiver in her hands that betrays her fear. She glances to Sanji, perhaps wondering if he, too, will step in, but he shakes his head and rolls a cigarette around a frown. The smoke from the tip is like the promise of fires to come: Merry will burn for she deserves nothing less, and her pyre will be seen from over the horizon. Even Robin will see it too, from wherever she may be.

“Zoro’s right,” Luffy says, Shanks’ hat shadowing their eyes. “Merry can’t sail anymore.”

“He wants to burn her!” Usopp cries, pointing an accusing finger at Zoro.

Zoro glowers, hoping there aren’t cinders behind his eyes. “It makes sense.”

“How does that _make sense_?”

“We can’t fix her,” Luffy says, shooting Zoro an indecipherable look. It reminds him of the Alabastian desert and the almost-conversation they had there. But its meaning is lost as Luffy turns back to Usopp, a neutral expression settling back on their face, worthy of the captain they’ve become.

Usopp refuses to give in, focusing his anger on Luffy instead. “Well we should try before we _set her on fire_!”

“The shipwrights said she won’t be the same.”

“They’re wrong!”

“We need a new ship.”

“No!” Usopp cries, tears gathering behind his eyes. Anger flushes his face a violent red. He smacks Luffy’s pacifying hand away and regards the crew with betrayal. “ _No_. We don't need a new ship. You need a new _friend_.”

He storms out, ignoring the calls of his name.

All eyes turn to Luffy.

“ _Go after him then_ ,” Nami says.

Luffy shakes their head, expression grim. Anger is something terrible on their face, but hurt is even worse. “No. We need to get a new ship and find Robin. Then we'll talk. Sanji, Chopper, you two look for Robin. Nami -”

“Back to the shipyard,” she sighs, passing Chopper and his weeping over to Sanji.

Luffy nods before turning to Zoro. Their eyes linger where Usopp had struck him, but there isn't any damage to be seen. They don’t look pleased about it either way, and Zoro feels himself warm at the attention. He doesn’t need Luffy watching out for him, but he can’t deny it’s kind of… nice.

Zoro could burn Water 7 to a crisp. He could combust in the blink of an eye. He is a being of the sun, of the skies and the orange horizon over the sea.

Luffy’s attention is… _nice_.

“I'll go after him,” Zoro says, a decision which seems to surprise the rest of the crew. Merry doesn't need anyone to watch her, not when their entire hoard of treasure is packed in a case and ready to be spent. Their jolly roger will deter the stupidest of looters, and Zoro isn't planning on wandering far.

Usopp, he is sure, cannot bear to wander far.

Zoro is right. Finding Usopp isn’t a problem; the tread of his boots in the sand lead Zoro just a stone’s throw from the ship, but the snivelling from behind the rock is a rather helping clue. It’s knowing what to say upon finding Usopp curled over his slingshot that’s the issue, his hands clenched tight in the frizzy, salt-washed ringlets of his hair. He peeps up over his fiddle-like nose and seems surprised to spot Zoro, but then he drops his chin back down and shuffles like a crab in the sand.

If he’s trying to scuttle his way to safety, he’d be better off growing wings.

Zoro crouches down - not to make himself less intimidating, but to offer some semblance of comfort. An awkward, half-foot between them is about as close as he can bear to be. He may not burn Luffy, but he had burnt Usopp. Testing his fires is the last thing Zoro needs right now.

“I'm not sorry I yelled at you,” Usopp mumbles into his knees. “But I'm sorry for hitting you.”

“It’s fine,” Zoro says; he has already healed. He tries not to think about Luffy’s expression if he hadn’t. “You should put something on your hand though.”

Usopp blinks at his blistered knuckles as though he cannot feel the pain. Then he lifts his head to Zoro, his gaze watery but strong. “You really don’t have a Devil Fruit?” he asks, staring at where he had struck Zoro, at Zoro’s unmarred skin.

“No,” Zoro replies, forcing the words out through the smoke in his lungs. These are thoughts he had not voiced before - not to Luffy, or his father, or even to himself. “But I had a sister, once. And I thought - I thought if I wanted it hard enough, she wouldn’t leave. I thought I could keep her alive just by refusing to let her go.”

He doesn’t insult Usopp by suggesting that Merry and Kuina are nothing alike - one, a ship, and the other a hopeful little girl. The Going Merry is important to Usopp just as Wadō Ichimonji is important to Zoro, but where Wadō represents what Zoro has lost, Merry represents what Usopp has gained.

“She’s your family,” Zoro says. “She’s our family, our ship.”

“I thought she’d be with us forever,” Usopp croaks. “Why can’t we fix her?”

Zoro doesn’t have an answer to that, but he does remain still as Usopp leans against his shoulder and cries.

This is how the the Aqua Laguna finds them, pulling its waves back to empty the sea. The klaxon is thunder over the city, warning of a dark, approaching sky. Zoro looks up at the sound, one hand reaching down to settle on Yubashiri, the lightest of his three blades. Usopp peels his snotty nose away from Zoro’s shirt and cringes, pointedly not looking in Zoro’s direction as he scrubs his face. Above them and around them, the klaxon continues to wail. Water 7’s many ship ports seem to vibrate at the sound, the ships and the chains that harbour them quaking in a storm.

“What’s that sound?” Usopp asks, half-clinging to Zoro. They rise, Usopp noticeably reluctant. The last of his tears will probably protect him should Zoro’s skin combust once again.

“It’s coming from the city,” Zoro says.

Usopp emits a weak sound. “Good thing we’re staying here and definitely not going over there, then.”

Zoro hums, rather doubting that. He turns away from the city and looks past the Merry, out beyond the harbour and into the sun. Something has fallen low over the ocean or risen high from its seas - a dark shape, stretching across the horizon. Zoro can only imagine that they’re clouds, bringing with them a storm, but Usopp’s quaking knees suggests something more sinister.

“Oh no. Oh no, oh no, _oh no_ ,” Usopp whimpers, tugging at Zoro’s haramaki. “Those aren’t clouds - it’s a wave! We need to - need to get back to the Merry!”

Zoro considers Merry’s battered hull and shakes his head. “Or the upper city.”

“We probably won’t make it in time!”

“Then we’ll drown.”

Usopp’s wailing increases until he is almost as deafening as the alarm. “Oh my _god_ , how are you so _calm_ about this? We’re going to die! We’re going to get swept into the ocean and die!”

 _Or you could fly_ , whispers the fire in Zoro’s chest, his heart heavy with the lives he once lived.

“We’re not going to die,” he says, ignoring the tingle of flames across his back. He hasn’t needed his wings to escape death before, so he isn’t going to need them now - he _shouldn’t_ need them now. His feet have carried him this far, and they will continue to carry him still.

(Or so he hopes).

Leaving Merry behind them, Zoro and Usopp bolt for the upper city. Zoro’s blades clack together as he runs, but the sound is a delicate, airy tune compared to the klaxon. The alarm shrieks over the city, deafening everything but the rush of blood in Zoro’s ears. Usopp might be warbling behind him, clammy and overcome with fear, but Zoro doesn’t turn back to check. He knows that Usopp will follow, just as he knows that the wave will crash down eventually, whether or not they have scrambled to higher ground.

The city of Water 7 had not seemed so large before. Over bridges and through narrow, high-walled alleys they run. The streets are beige and uniform, a maze of weather-worn, patched-up buildings. Multiple times, Zoro turns a street only for Usopp to yank him in the opposite direction, leading them left and right and up, always up and up and up. The third time that Usopp stumbles to a halt, leaning over himself to catch his breath, Zoro dares a glance back to the horizon. The tsunami looms closer: soon, it will plunge the lower district into the sea. The city shudders in anticipation. But the upper city is only a few levels away; they will make it, Zoro thinks, urging Usopp back into a run.

“Zoro! Zoro, Usopp!”

It’s Chopper, skidding to a halt on the four hooves of his Walk Point. Zoro yanks Usopp back by his dungarees before they can collide.

“I can’t find Luffy and Nami anywhere!” Chopper pants, pacing nervously. He glances between Zoro and Usopp with a hopeful expression, as though they might be hiding their wayward nakama from sight. “ _Please_ tell me you’ve seen them?”

Zoro shakes his head, decision already made. “You two get to safety. I’ll go look. Where were they last?”

“Well, I think they were - well I’m not sure, but -” Chopper paws a hoof against the ground, so very _not-subtly_ glancing at Usopp. “In the central dockyard? But they should’ve heard the klaxon, so hopefully they’ll be - Zoro, wait! _Zoro_!”

The Aqua Laguna rears up over the island, a shadow overhanging the sun. Zoro sprints back down into the city, sparing no thought for how he will return. He climbs up onto the rooftops at the first opportunity to orientate himself; the dockyard is some ways away, but Luffy and Nami won’t be there. No, they will have fled the lower ground for the stairs - or knowing Luffy, the roof tops. Luffy’s Devil Fruit doesn’t limit them to the streets, and so Zoro casts his gaze out above the city instead, searching the towers and walls and the gates of the districts.

The ocean crashes into the town. _Fly_ , yearns Zoro’s fire. _Run_ , urges his gut, picking a direction for his feet to tread.

He hears Nami’s shrieking before he spots her. Her wailing rivals Usopp’s, but hers is high with anger where his was wet with tears. Luffy’s infectious, boundless laughter rises like the Aqua Laguna. Zoro feels himself smiling as he leaps down from the roof tops and into the wide, deserted breadth of the plaza. Luffy bounds into view with Nami slung over their shoulder, and Zoro laughs despite the danger, despite the surge of water chasing at their heels.

“Oh hey! It’s Zoro!”

Luffy bee-lines right across the plaza, face bright with exertion and glee. They whirl on the spot so that Nami can see him too, but Zoro only has enough time to catch a glimpse of her glower before Luffy’s grin spins back around.

“Have you seen the size of the _wave_?” Luffy asks as they run, gesturing at the Aqua Laguna. “Isn’t it _huge_?”

Zoro throws back his head and laughs. Salty winds slaps against his face. The Aqua Laguna is thunder behind them, the wrath of ocean gods pulling Water 7 to the bottom of the sea. The sound of its destruction is the roar of a thousand tides, and the pounding in Zoro’s ears is his heart beating in exhilaration. He wants to live for this, he realises, for Luffy laughing and Nami swearing and the thrill of adventure in the chase of the sea. He wants to live for his crew and not just Kuina, not just her dream, not just her memory. He wants to savour the look of defeat on Mihawk’s face, but he wants Luffy there with him when he does.

“It’s catching up!” Nami yells, almost unheard over the boom of the sea. Saltwater splatters down onto their back, dousing them in a warning spray. The Aqua Laguna must be close; Nami’s face is as pale as a sheet. “We won’t make it!”

Luffy laughs, spirited and free. “We will, we will!”

Zoro throws a look over his shoulder to the galloping wave, the storm-swallowed sky, and the foamy fangs of the water devouring the streets like a wildfire, and realises that Luffy is wrong.

They won’t make it. Not if they run, not even if they bounce over the roof-tops, Luffy’s rubber body slingshotting them away. The upper city is a haven they will never reach, the great, concrete walls like a dam breaking apart the waves. Luffy seems to realise this as Zoro does, their pace quickening, expression setting hard. Their hat billows behind them and their flip-flop squelch as the water rushes in, licking like fire at their heels. Nami’s shrieking adopts a hysterical edge. Zoro feels the tsunami roll over the ends of his swords.

Heat _blazes_ inside of Zoro’s chest, but it is not panic, not fear.

It is flame.

He lunges away from the sea, shoving Luffy and Nami to the ground. Fire scorches through his body, igniting deep within his chest and pouring out through his skin. The Aqua Laguna surges over them, ice water slamming into the streets. For a moment, Zoro is sure of nothing except the darkness and pain of the tide, of Luffy’s deadweight and Nami’s watery scream, but then there is a light so bright that the sky could be aflame; the sun itself may have fallen, boiling the plaza and burning away the sea. Fire crackles and water hisses into steam. The cobbles of Water 7 blacken as the air around Zoro swelters, an inferno smothering the tide.

All Zoro sees is fire. All he is, in every lifetime, is flame.

Molten wings stretch out and dry up the swell of the sea.

 

 

 

**v. ash**

Voices argue as Zoro drifts in and out of consciousness; muffled, they seem to whisper far away. He feels light, as though the earth is not enough to tether him. The conversation is a fog of words and tones that he cannot understand, but he is tired and comfortable, and something round and itchy rests atop his head.

People come and go, and so does Zoro’s awareness. Something soft drapes over his body, perhaps a blanket or a towel. If he was wet, he cannot recall. He remembers a sound like thunder and the light of the sun, but little else. There was pain and there was relief, as though a great burden was lifted from his shoulders, but now there is only warmth. Somebody somewhere utters something, maybe his name. Zoro turns towards the sound and feels a rush of breath across his face, sees a blur of movement, but nothing more.

Someone carries him close to their chest. The world rocks side-to-side as ships do across the waves.

 _Was he always_ , Zoro musters the energy to wonder, _this small?_

 

 

 

Seagulls caw from high in the sky. Sunlight streams in through a small port window, and Zoro peels his eyes open with a heavy reluctance. The room he finds himself in is unfamiliar. Jars of herbs and salves line the wall by the bed, and his three katana are propped up by the door. A whole array of medical equipment is meticulously organised on the desk, and sat there is Chopper, engrossed in a book as he twirls back and forth on a chair.

“Chopper?” Zoro calls - or tries to, making a sound like a garbled, burnt-up squawk instead. Still, Chopper jerks around at the noise as though it was his name, and Zoro only has a second to question what the _hell’s_ happened to his voice before he registers just how _large_ this room and Chopper, little, teeny Chopper, scurrying closer with a frantic look, appear to be.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, don’t panic,” Chopper urges, weilding a too-large stethoscope in his too-large hooves. “Just take a deep breath. Can you understand me?”

Zoro breathes in deep, and the cool air of the open sea clashes with the smoke in his lungs. He shivers, his body of fire and feathers shaking, and then he combusts right there, all bundled up on the bed.

Chopper shrieks. Sanji kicks the door open and steps in wielding a fire extinguisher, which he promptly uses to smother Zoro’s flames.

“He’s awake, he’s awake!” Chopper screeches, but this doesn’t deter Sanji in the slightest.

Once the last of the flames are doused, Zoro is left a soggy, foamy mess. He isn’t on fire anymore, which can only be a good thing, but he certainly isn’t about to sing the cook’s praises. Instead, he unfolds his wings with care - all four of them, the smaller two tucked under the larger - and shakes away the foam. Coppery feathers shine underneath as though the wings are made from a hundred strips of amber welded together. Zoro folds them back against his torso with ease, moving instinctively despite having no recollection of experiencing this body before.

He’s a bird. _A bird_.

“You know,” Sanji says, setting the fire extinguisher down. “When you said you didn’t have a Devil Fruit, you could’ve warned us about all this.”

Zoro shoots him a flat look.

“There you go, he understands us,” Sanji says, ruffling the fur atop Chopper’s head. “I’ll give the others a head’s up. _Resident pigeon liable to combust_.”

Not everyone else seems to find the situation as entertaining, but they all take it in stride. Befuddled acceptance is a better reaction than what Zoro ever hoped, but it does beg the question of how long he's been asleep. For starters, he has no idea whose ship they're on, and from what he can remember, the blue-haired, speedo-wearing cyborg wasn't a member of their crew. Luffy and Usopp also appear to have reconciled with minimal injury, and Robin has found her way back to the crew. Her smile is the most genuine that Zoro’s ever seen it, and he doesn't think he imagines the way everybody stands around her, beaming with reassurance and pride.

He's missed a fair amount of action, sleeping the days away. The cyborg is Franky, now their shipwright, and the ship is the Thousand Sunny, Merry's ram-hearted, lion-headed successor. Water 7 is a speck on the horizon behind them, and Enies Lobby is a smouldering wreckage beside it. There's a tale there that Zoro wasn't privy to, but the crew laugh as Usopp spins a story of a warrior called _Sogeking_ who lit the World Government flag in flames.

“Can you change back?” Chopper asks, addressing the elephant in the room. “I’d like to give you a full check-up, but it's kind of weird talking to you when you can't talk back...”

No-one has yet to ask about Zoro’s transformation, but they all want to, it's plain to see. Zoro doesn’t know what conclusions they’ve reached, but if he’s missed the initial screaming and flabbergast from the crew, then he’s all the more grateful for having slept the days away. The problem is, he doesn’t know _how_ he transformed in the first place, so changing back is anybody’s guess.

“Perhaps we should investigate on the next island,” Robin suggests. “I would like to expand our library now that we have the means.”

“Or we could stick him in another Aqua Laguna,” Sanji says.

Nami shakes her head. “It’s an annual phenomenon,” she explains, as though this is the only problem with that idea. It’s only now that she speaks up that Zoro realises that she’s hardly spoken at all. While most of the crew were catching him up to speed, bantering with each other and laughing at Usopp’s tightly-spun tale, Nami watched on at the periphery of Zoro’s vision, perched on the end of the infirmary bed. Her quiet reminds him of Whiskey Peak and the fall out, of when he had retreated to the crow’s nest and thought of escaping to the sun. He had worried her then and he must have worried her now; she had almost died beneath the waves of Water 7, and Luffy nearly had too.

His captain and their navigator, the ones he flew to save, the first and closest of his friends. Zoro will burn a hole through the sky if it means protecting his friends again. He can’t imagine a life without them in it - he can’t imagine a _world_ without Luffy in it, the one to reach Raftel, the one to be Pirate King.

Zoro’s glad he was able to protect that dream.

“Okay, everyone out!” Chopper says, interrupting the theories of how best to turn Zoro back. “He needs to rest. Doctor’s orders. Questions will have to wait.”

Everyone bar Luffy filters out. Nami lingers for a moment, staring Zoro down with a withering glare, but she strides out with her head high once she feels that he’s been properly chastised. Chopper hesitates as Luffy plonks themself down where Nami had been, but he acquiesces at Luffy’s easy smile.

“He needs to _sleep_ ,” Chopper repeats, but the argument is weak. He is already setting the stethoscope aside and tidying away his books, making himself scarce for the moment of privacy that Luffy needn’t ask for.

“He will,” Luffy replies. “Pinky promise.”

“I don’t even _have_ a pinky,” Chopper says, but he shakes on it before scampering out of the room. There are two doors from the infirmary, one which seems to lead further inside the ship, and another which opens out onto the deck. Chopper chooses the latter, and Zoro turns at the rush of sea-air and sunlight in through the door.

He yearns to be outside, basking even as the shadows reappear; he needs to be under the sun.

“Hmm,” is all Luffy says after a soft moment of quiet. Their legs swing from the bed, making the mattress creak. “I guess this makes Zoro Chicken-butt too?”

Zoro rolls his head back and glares.

“And I guess I get why Zoro didn’t want anyone touching him,” Luffy goes on with a smile. “You really worried everyone on Water 7. You were a ball of fire! But then you wouldn’t wake up so I had to carry you back and everybody’s faces were really funny when they found out it was you! It’s a shame you’re not green though, that would be really cool. But you’re already cool! You’re a _bird_!”

That doesn’t make him sound cool at all.

“We’re gonna have to turn Zoro back though. You can’t hold swords like this! How’re gonna be my swordsman? I guess you can make a lot of fire like this, right? Can you glow? Are you like - solar-powered? Are you solar-powered even when you’re not a bird?”

Zoro thinks of the high sun of Alubarna after the rain, how he climbed to the tallest tower and curled up in the sun, and nods.

Luffy laughs, delighted by the idea. Chin propped up in their hands, they lean closer, waiting for Zoro’s reply. It’s only as the silence passes, as the ship rocks on and the ocean _whooshes_ against the hull, that their smiles slips. Instead, they pout, the dimples from their happiness disappearing with their frown.

“Chopper’s right, it’s no fun when you can’t talk back. Zoro needs to get better soon.”

 _Take me outside_ , Zoro thinks. Chopper would be mad if Zoro hopped out himself, but if Luffy instigated the move then they’d probably get away with it. Chopper, after all, cannot say no to their captain, just as Zoro cannot say no to Chopper’s watery, doey eyes. He unfolds his wings again and gives them a shake, scattering specks of fire across the room. Unravelling himself from the blankets is more of a struggle, but Luffy catches onto his intentions and reaches over without missing a beat.

“I got it, I got it,” they say, scooping Zoro up. They keep one of the blankets wrapped around him which is probably for the best; Zoro doesn’t know yet how flammable this body is. “This is just like before! ‘Cept Zoro’s not covered in water this time. Where’d you wanna go? How ‘bout the crow’s nest? Or by the swing? We’ve got a swing now! And grass!”

It’s warm out on the deck, surrounded by friends and lit by the sun. Chopper pitches a fit when he spots them, but Sanji herds him away with a bowl of ice cream and a crafty step. The ice cream almost distracts Luffy as well, but they seem to realise that holding Zoro makes eating a little difficult. They whine but continue on, introducing the gym and the figurehead and the meadow-like lawn.

Zoro only manages to stay awake for half of the impromptu tour, rocked to sleep by the ship and the bounce in Luffy’s step.

Luffy doesn’t seem to mind.

 

 

 

Two days pass. Zoro sleeps through the first, woken only by the buzz of the crew going about their days. On the second, he takes to familiarising himself with the ship and his body, but it’s slow going. Birds are built to fly, not to walk, and his attempts at climbing the stairs are met with laughter from the crew. He would threaten to burn them to a crisp if he could talk, but they wouldn’t take him seriously anyway. He’s lived this life hiding what he is and what he can do. He won’t hurt them if he can help it, and they know that.

“Why not fly, little bro?”

It’s Franky, watching from the upper deck. He is still a stranger to Zoro, but the rest of the crew have accepted him with ease. Certainly, everything about Franky fits right into this crew: his love for the Sunny, his questionable fashion choices and hair, but most obviously his gigantic, blue-starred arms of steel, which he customises and tinkers with all day long. His arsenal of weapons and lasers bring a shine to Luffy’s eyes, and the excited squealing with Usopp and Chopper only cements Franky place in the crew.

Truthfully, Zoro doesn’t know anything about Franky. This hasn’t stopped Franky from nicknaming him _little bro_.

“You can, right?” Franky goes on, rubbing his knobby chin. “I could try an’ fix ‘em, but the little doc might be the better person to ask.”

Flying isn't something that Zoro wants to talk to Chopper about, or anyone, so he glares at the stairs instead. If he spreads his wings and rises up to the sky, he might never come down again. For all that Zoro wants to stay with this crew, live with them, laugh with them, and maybe, just maybe, even grow old with them, he doesn't trust his instincts not to carry him away. All Zahra had wanted was to fly, and look where that got her.

No, Zoro's better off tethered to the ground.

“Maybe Zoro just needs some encouragement!” Luffy suggests, bouncing down the stairs. They’ve yet to stray far from Zoro over the past few days, bombarding him with questions and getting handsy with his tail. They’re like a cat chasing a piece of string, except the string is liable to combust at any given moment. There’s a part of Zoro that wants Luffy to stop _petting_ him, but there’s another part that quite likes the touch, even if it takes all of his willpower not to burst into flame.

Luffy scoops him up and tucks him under one arm. Zoro’s protesting noise attracts the attention of the rest of the crew, and they all watch with varying degrees of amusement and concern and Luffy springs up the ship’s rigging.

“Captain, that may not be wise,” Robin says, although she doesn’t get up from the deckchair to stop them.

Luffy just laughs, which cements the sinking feeling in Zoro’s gut. “It’s okay, it’s okay, you guys’ll catch him, right?”

Nobody says _right_ , but Luffy chucks Zoro off the mainsail anyway.

He doesn’t fly. He doesn’t _want_ to fly.

There is a moment of terrifying _nothingness_ before he lands in a windswept heap in Usopp’s arms.

“Throw him back, throw him back!” Luffy calls, swinging around the mast with glee.

“He’s not a _toy_ ,” Nami says, but there is a smirk on her face that she cannot hide. She doesn’t seem particularly concerned about throwing Zoro around like a hot potato. Neither does Robin, in fact, although Chopper is already scrambling for his medical kit.

Usopp looks down at Zoro with a guilty expression. “You’d probably fit in Kabuto.”

He does.

Usopp and Luffy give up with throwing him around after an hour. There’s only a single instance of Zoro achieving anything akin to flight, and that’s only because a gale knocks Luffy sidewards and Zoro nearly plummets over the side of the ship. He tumble-glides straight into Franky, who takes one look at his disheveled appearance and sighs, calling the game to an end.

Franky is Zoro’s new favourite crewmate, and no amount of whining from Luffy will change that.

 

 

 

What turns him back, in the end, is nothing more than a dozy afternoon spent sunbathing on the deck. There may be other factors at play, but all Zoro knows is that one moment he is warm, comfortable, and _safe_ , surrounded by his crew and days away from Water 7, and then he pushes himself up with distinctly human limbs as Chopper’s shrieking startles him awake.

“You’re back!” Chopper squeals, launching across the deck. “What did you _do_? How are you feeling? Are you in any pain? Can you -”

“You’re naked,” Nami deadpans.

One of Robin’s extra hands appears to cover Chopper’s eyes.

Zoro curses, and then curses again as Sanji chucks a pair of trousers at him. “I feel fine, Chopper. Dunno what happened.”

“You turned into a _bird_ , that’s what happened,” Usopp says, jabbing a finger in Zoro’s face. His serious expression is lessened by Luffy’s head bobbing over his shoulder and nodding in agreement. “Don’t think you’re getting away with not explaining anything!”

Luffy grins as they catch Zoro’s eye. Zoro blushes, his heart beating so loudly that he misses a few lines of the conversation.

“This is certainly a curious matter,” Robin says, the crew voicing their assent around her. “I have encountered a few notions of firebirds in my readings, although I am inclined to say you resemble the _phoenix_ most of all. It is said that, when it dies, it's reborn from the ashes and lives again.”

“Eh, sounds about right,” Zoro says, submitting to Chopper’s check-up with a sigh. He supposes there isn’t any point in keeping the secret anymore; they’ve seen what he is, and there’s no way he can lie his way out of turning into a fiery chicken. Of all the places he imagined to be coming clean, he hadn’t imagined on the deck of the Sunny, half-naked and sprawled out in the sun. He’d expected a fight, raised voices, or having burnt a friend at the very least. But here he is relaxed, and happy, if not a little embarrassed, and surrounded by curious but _calm_ faces.

“Oi, moss-head, what are you smiling about now?”

“Your stupid eyebrows,” Zoro shoots back, but it must lack his usual fire because Sanji just twitches his jaw and lights another cigarette instead of getting mad.

Luffy laughs, bouncing over Usopp to crouch by Zoro instead. “Nah, Zoro’s just happy ‘cause he doesn’t have to keep his Devil Fruit a secret anymore!” They loop one elasticated arm around Zoro’s body, squeezing him tightly. Zoro wheezes, his heart pounding a million miles an hour in his chest.

“He _hasn’t_ eaten a Devil Fruit, idiot, we’ve already established that,” Nami says, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Eh? But then how does Zoro turn into a bird?”

Zoro shrugs out of Luffy’s grasp. It feels weird to shrug; he has _arms_ again, he can pop his spine. Despite being able to burst into flame at any given moment, he felt vulnerable as a bird. Now he sighs cinders and watches him flicker over Luffy’s knees. “No idea. I didn’t think I could, this time.”

“‘This time?’” Franky repeats. “Whaddo you mean?”

Zoro shrugs again. Just because he has the chance to explain doesn't mean he knows how. The last person that found out about his nature was Koshiro, and that hadn’t exactly been a fun time.

“I think this may be a conversation best held over lunch,” Robin suggests, more perceptive than most. Her words immediately distract Luffy, Usopp, and Sanji, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the crew.

So lunch it is.

Even with the Sunny’s larger dining area, seating eight around the table is a bit of a squeeze. Sanji spends most of the meal serving drinks and refilling plates, but Franky’s shoulders easily make up for him. Still, the Sunny is more than capable of housing eight people, something which the Merry would’ve struggled with. Living in close quarters with seven other people is one thing, but living in _cramped_ quarters is another. Still, Zoro misses Merry, and hearing that he slept through her funeral pyre fills him with regret.

“It’s all right,” Usopp assures, waving a sandwich at him. “A part of Merry lives on in the Sunny!”

Franky grins. “ _Aow!_ He’s right, Zoro-bro, I repurposed what I could of Merry to help build the Sunny! So she’s still the Going Merry, in a way.”

“Kinda sounds like me,” Zoro muses, a statement that quietens the crew.

“So, if you’re saying you’re a phoenix...” Sanji is the one to break the ice - and of _course_ it’s the cook, for who else treats Zoro with such a no-nonsense, argumentative attitude? He taps ashes from his cigarette into a dish, almost sounding bored. “How _long_ have you been nineteen?”

“I dare say the question should be ‘how many times have you been nineteen’?” Robin amends, and the fact that Sanji’s eyes don’t transform into hearts speaks volumes.

Everyone seems eager to hear what Zoro has the say - but he doesn’t even know where to start.

“Hell if I know,” he admits. “I don’t remember much from before.”

“Your previous lifetime must have coincided with that of Gol D. Roger,” Robin presses. If she whips out a notebook and starts taking notes, Zoro won’t be surprised.

“No, it was just a kid before me.” He knows _that much_ at least. Zahra is a familiar name in the back of his mind, but it’s the only one. “But before her, yeah maybe. I think I remember sailing.”

“You were a _girl_?” Usopp cries.

“YOU WERE A PIRATE,” Luffy bellows, slamming their hands down on the table so hard that the plates and glasses shake. “I KNEW IT. THAT’S SO COOL.”

“But wait - wait,” Chopper interrupts before Luffy flings themself across the table. He clutches onto his hat, looking worried. “Surely you can’t be killed? What factors influence your mortality? Can you contract a disease? Why did she die - or you die - I don’t know - but she was young? Why did she -?”

That’s a bunch of questions that Zoro can’t answer. “I die, but I just don’t stay dead. I’m kind of a different person every time, but not really.”

“But you were a _girl_ ,” Usopp says, holding back a snicker.

Zoro shrugs: _yeah, and?_ “I remember a city and a lot of snow. I think she lived on the streets - Burned on ‘em too.”

“Burned?” the crew ask.

“A phoenix is said to burst into flame upon death and rise again from its ashes,” Robin supplies, and Zoro nods along. She might already know more about himself than he does, but this hardly surprises him.

“The thought of you doing that is crazy,” Nami says, but she doesn't seem to be doubting him. It would be hard to, Zoro thinks, considering he burnt the Aqua Laguna away.

Franky laughs, throwing his head back. “Come _on_ , our captain’s made of rubber!”

Mumbles of _fair enough_ and _good point_ resound around the table. Usopp finally swallows his laughter. Luffy grins as though proud to be used to prove a point.

“So you _can_ die?” Sanji asks.

“I… guess,” says Zoro. “I think Zahra was hungry, but I don’t know if that killed her. It might’ve been the cold, or something else. I can’t really be cut or shot, I heal too fast.”

“Mihawk almost killed you. And you almost cut your legs off,” Nami argues. She kicks him under the table, right where his ankle scars are, and Zoro hisses.

“I didn’t _try_ to heal those times. It would’ve been too obvious.”

Luffy’s face scrunches into a weird look. “But Mihawk almost killed Zoro.”

“Well, he would’ve come _back_ ,” Usopp reasons. “Right? You would've just like… turned into ashes or something.”

“Okay, _that_ sounds crazy,” Sanji says.

Zoro nods, and then shakes his head, “Yeah, I would've come back. But - not as me. It’s complicated.”

“You just can’t be bothered to explain,” Sanji accuses. The red end of his cigarette flickers like the challenge in his eyes.

Zoro’s lip curls. “When you’ve lived as long as I have, you can’t be bothered to do a _lot of things_ , swirly-brow.”

“Like bathe?” Nami suggests. “Or learn to read a map?”

“I can read a map,” Zoro snaps.

The crew glance between one another, their lips tightly shut. Even Franky, who has not known Zoro long at all, has nothing to say about that.

Zoro huffs and leans back, arms crossed over his chest. “I hate you guys,” he grumbles, and they all smile at the lie.

 

 

 

“If I threw Zoro overboard, would he turn back into a chicken?” Luffy asks.

“Would if I drowned,” Zoro replies, adding another weight plate to the barbell. If he was up in the gym, he would double or triple the weight, but Franky doesn’t want him throwing equipment around the grass deck. Zoro is beginning to wish he _was_ in the gym, not because of this limitation, but because Luffy hasn’t left him alone in _two days._ The rest of the crew seem content to treat Zoro as normal, minus a few bird jokes here and there. Luffy, on the other hand, has a mind full of obnoxious questions, and it seems they won’t leave Zoro be until they have an answer for every single one.

“What would happen to your ashes if you drowned? Would you get swept away? Would you be able to start your next life? Or would there be lots of little chickens washing up all over the world?”

Some of Luffy’s questions have merit. But most of them don’t bear thinking about.

Zoro tries to focus on weightlifting, but he doesn’t want to ignore Luffy either. With a shake of his head, he heaves the barbell up across his shoulders and sees Luffy watching him from where they are lounged across the grass. What appears to be one of Usopp’s sketches is flattened out before them, and they are colouring it in with no rhythm or reason. One of their flip-flops has slipped off. Luffy’s hat is lying close enough to Zoro’s feet that he worries about squashing it.

 _Why do I like you so much_ , Zoro wonders. He steadies himself to lift the barbell higher, and Luffy rolls onto their back, watching Zoro with an upside down grin.

“If Zoro’s lived for hundreds of years, d’you think he’s seen Raftel?”

Now _that_ is a question worth asking. Zoro can’t say for certain that he has seen Raftel, but if he’s lived for as long as he believes he has, then who’s to say he hasn’t traversed this world twice-over? Who’s to say he hasn’t seen every island within the reach of the sun?

He sets the barbell down. “If I have, I’m not telling you the way. Raftel doesn’t interest me.”

Luffy seems to approve. “Maybe it’s just as well Zoro gets lost in a straight line.”

“Hey! Roads _move_!”

“Ahh, no they don’t.”

“Yes they -” Zoro takes a deep breath, feeling smoke stir in his lungs. It won’t do to lose control of his flames, not on the ship. He’s going to have to practise smothering them down. “They’re not where they’re _supposed_ to be, that’s all.”

Luffy rolls back over to return to the colouring book, but Zoro can see that they’re really just hiding a smile. He rolls his eyes and continues weightlifting, counting each lift as he goes. Chopper runs over to join Luffy with colouring, and soon Usopp has joined them too, until the three of them are chatting, drawing, and throwing crayons at each other while Zoro works out just feet away.

“Oi Luffy, what’s with all these questions, anyway?” Zoro asks despite himself, during a moment of rest. The ship is light with sounds of everyone going about their days, from Sanji clattering in the kitchen to Nami tending her tangerine trees above. “I thought you didn’t care about where I came from or anything.”

“I don’t,” Luffy replies, as Usopp and Chopper roll about beside them. “But if Zoro knows stuff that no one else knows, then that’s bad, right? Like Robin and Franky.”

“Franky?”

“Ahh, you were asleep! Franky had these really important blueprints for something, but he burned them so now no one else can read them. It was funny! The government dudes were so mad. And everyone’s after Robin ‘cause she’s really smart.”

There is laughter from across the ship; Robin must be listening in.

“So if Zoro knows where things are or stuff about a long time ago, then we gotta keep you away from the World Government too,” Luffy concludes, nodding firmly.

“You talking about that lost century and those Ancient Weapons and stuff?” Zoro asks, wracking his brain for the few details they uncovered at Alabasta. He can’t think of anything in particular, but his fires flicker uneasily. “I don’t know shit about anything.”

(“That’s true,” Nami calls down from the deck above).

“Ahh, that’s good. But it doesn’t matter ‘cause I ain’t letting the government touch any of my crew,” Luffy declares. “And whoever Sanji’s running from ain’t getting him either.”

There’s a sea-worthy curse from Sanji as he trips over a step and almost sends a pitcher of juice flying. Nami’s face appears over the bannister and shoots Luffy a warning look. Luffy laughs, unabashed, but still knows better than to elaborate and risk her wrath.

“It’s starting to sound like _you_ know too much,” Usopp says, tapping Luffy on the head with his sketchbook.

“Nah, I know enough,” says Luffy, and Zoro goes back to his weightlifting and wonders what _that_ could mean.

 

 

 

“Psst. Psst, Zoro. You awake?”

It’s midnight somewhere on the Sunny, but Luffy’s questions still haven’t stopped. Zoro cranks his neck around, peeling one eye open. He doesn’t sleep much at night, waking with the warm dawn and preferring to nap out in the sun. But even he likes to be undisturbed for a few hours, which he most certainly _isn’t_ with Luffy’s neck hanging down from the hammock above.

“Zoro knows I like him even if he’s a chicken, right?”

He almost shoves Luffy’s head away, but that would require too much effort. “Aye captain.”

Luffy is quiet. Their breathing is so soft that they may have gone to sleep, but the creak of their hammock as they swing from it gives them away. “Zoro knows I _really_ like him, right?”

Zoro scrubs a hand over his face, trying to wake himself up. He is _too tired_ for this shit; why has Luffy chosen now, of all times, to have this conversation? Is there even a conversation to be had? He can’t be bothered to think about it right now, so he just kicks the blanket aside and takes the moment - two moments, three - to appreciate this final night of sleeping comfortably, before: “Get in.”

Miraculously, Luffy hesitates. “Zoro’s okay with me being that close?”

“Just get in the bed - _quietly_!”

 _Quietly_ is impossible when trying to squeeze a rubber man and an immortal being of fire into a one-man hammock. Luffy is surprisingly boney for someone whose body is elasticated, meaning Zoro has to grit his teeth as they clamber over him. There isn’t anywhere to clamber _to_ , but Luffy is perseverant and tries to wiggle themself into the non-existent gap under Zoro’s arm.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m just happy! Oh! Zoro’s really warm. You were really warm as a bird, too. It was like carrying around a whole cooked chicken! But I couldn’t eat it, and it didn’t smell so great -”

“ _Luffy_.”

Luffy sucks their lips in, eyes twinkling. Zoro would very much like to kiss that smug look right off of their face. That’s a conversation that should definitely happen at some point, but not now, as Zoro struggles to breathe with Luffy’s elbows digging into his ribs.

Zoro knows, just as he knows how to Burn and rebirth, how to fly and to blaze, that this idiot will be the death of him one day.

“I'd follow you into my next life,” he murmurs, not expecting to be heard. But he is, of course he is, for Luffy has the will of a phoenix and it resounds with Zoro’s own.

“But then I'd be _old_ ,” they whine, going so far as to pout. “I can't imagine being old. Hey, Franky - how old are you?”

There’s a sleepy, “Thirty-four,” in reply.

“That’s _old_ ,” Luffy says, pressing a smile into Zoro’s side. “Can you imagine being that old?”

Muffled laughter fills the dormitory. Zoro glowers at the ceiling, realising that nobody is as asleep as he thought. He’s never going to hear the end of this in the morning. He’s surprised Sanji didn’t say anything about the _whole cooked chicken_ analogy, but he’s glad the cook held his tongue.

“Go to sleep,” Zoro growls, blushing so brightly he could rival the sun. “ _All of you_.”

Snorting laughter is his only reply.

 

 

 

Zoro wakes at dawn. He leaves Luffy as a snoring lump in his bed and hits the shower, grumbling curses about Nami and his apparent “terrible hygiene habits” all the while. By the time he achieves a shaggy, half-drowned dog appearance, it is still far too early for Sanji to be awake. Zoro slogs around the kitchen with his hair still damp, the water dripping down his neck evaporating as it touches his skin. His wet footsteps sizzle away in seconds, although he does have to scrub away some cinders after standing by the coffee machine too long. It whirs slowly and he yawns, setting aside a mug on autopilot. Robin will be up soon. He makes a cup of tea for himself and sits out on the deck, letting the time pass.

Now is as good a time as any to get to grips with his flames. He tries to keep the tea hot with the palms of his hands, but only succeeds in dropping it the first time it boils over. He has even less success setting a blade of grass alight, and that’s how Robin and Nami find him, grumbling at a leaf in his hand.

“Thank you for the coffee,” Robin says, as she does every morning.

“ _A_ _whole cooked chicken_ ,” says Nami, and the grassy deck of the Sunny almost goes up in flames.

“I'd forgive Zoro if he burnt the Sunny,” Luffy says not much later, draped over Zoro’s lap like some kind of soft, wriggly blanket. There's probably a word for whatever it is, and Zoro tries _partner_ under his breath before vowing not to dwell on it.

“Well I wouldn't!” Franky wails, already planning to double the number of fire extinguishers on the ship. He wants Zoro to carry one around with him permanently, but Luffy had batted their eyes at that and said, with a poker-straight face, “But then he'll be too hard to carry! And he'll be _lumpy._ ”

“So he'll be a _lumpy whole cooked chicken_?” Usopp asks around a yawn, and that, Zoro decides, is quite enough of _that_.

 

 

 

**vi. rebirth**

He is an uncountable age when his fire carves the way through the sky.

The island isn’t what they expect, but it’s just as he remembers it.

The sand is a gold sea. It has a fine, almost weightless feel about it, and as they trek up the beach to the molten-rock and soil, it feels like dust around their sandalled feet. The earth is dark here, a black so black that it could swallow the sun. The beach surrounding it is a ring of flame. The trees are quiet, shivering. He pulls his cloak tighter around his shoulders; a single touch and he could set this land alight.

The navigator holds out a hand, catching the dusty rain. _Volcanic ash_. The crew aren’t worried about it. The island could erupt under their feet at any moment, and he laughs, remembering something similar from a few years ago.

“Please don’t combust,” plead the crew; they’re joking, but they always mean it too. He’s almost Burned from this life many times, and they’re not ready to let him go. He isn’t either, but he’s always said they’ll be the death of him. He nudges the captain fondly - his captain, the one from this life and every life - and together they laugh, golden ashes falling between them like snow.

“Don’t tell me the way,” the captain orders, grinning beneath a hat. “But don’t get lost, ‘kay?”

He accepts the hand held out for him. “I’m following _you_ ,” he replies, and that, if nothing else, if not flying and falling and burning to ash, has always been the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment as you go :)


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